Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Charlotte Smith
-
Standard Name: Smith, Charlotte
Birth Name: Charlotte Turner
Married Name: Charlotte Smith
CS
, poet and novelist of the later eighteenth century, continued her output especially of children's books, into the very early nineteenth century. She wrote her poems for pleasure, her remarkable, now edited letters for relief from the struggles of a difficult life, but her novels (she said) only by necessity.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
996
Many of the latter have foreign settings, not for mere exoticism but to further a political critique which takes a global view. All her writing was done at high speed: she found it hard or impossible to make her income cover the unremitting expenses of her large dependent family. A critic has recently pronounced that the best of [her] writings . . . should be recognised as among the greatest works of the period.
Barrell, John. “To Stir up the People”. London Review of Books, Vol.
While struggling to finish this work, SHB
called it my own eternal rubbish
Burney, Sarah Harriet. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney. Editor Clark, Lorna J., University of Georgia Press.
130
and my long plague.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney. Editor Clark, Lorna J., University of Georgia Press.
153
By October 1811 she felt she had her plot organised and almost all her allocations of...
Author summary
Eliza Haywood
EH
was the most prolific novelist by number of titles (even ignoring those doubtfully ascribed) between Aphra Behn
and Charlotte Smith
. She also wrote poems, plays, periodicals, conduct books, translation, and theatre history. Her...
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
284
Keen, Paul. “Review”. Eighteenth Century Fiction, Vol.
14
, No. 2, pp. 229-35.
234
Kelly, Gary. Women, Writing, and Revolution 1790-1827. Clarendon.
47
Occupation
William Lisle Bowles
WLB
's sonnets, which formed the basis of his reputation as a poet, first appeared in 1789, five years after those of Charlotte Smith
and shortly after her lavish, illustrated fifth edition. Bowles always denied...
names
Medora Gordon Byron
At the date of the first Miss Byron novel, Elizabeth Strutt
was publishing as Mrs Byron while the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron
, had had only a single juvenile collection reviewed. While the name...
Material Conditions of Writing
Mary Robinson
MR
became a poet during her adolescence. Like Charlotte Smith
after her, she began gathering her poems for publication while living with her husband in debtors' prison.
Literary responses
Elizabeth Meeke
The Literary Journal began its notice with several paragraphs of comment on the status of the novel in general. It found Lafontaine's novel good in parts, but uneven, and Meeke's translation good in general, but...
Literary responses
Helen Maria Williams
A respectful review by Mary Wollstonecraft
in the Analytical praised Williams's calm domestic scenes,
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Editors Todd, Janet and Marilyn Butler, Pickering.
7: 251
her landscapes, and her convincing characters from nature, as well as the feminine sweetness in her style and...
Literary responses
Mary Hays
William Frend
had read the work in manuscript and been much pleased, though he took the liberty of suggesting a few revisions.
Hays, Mary. The Correspondence (1779-1843) of Mary Hays, British Novelist. Editor Brooks, Marilyn, Edwin Mellen.
244
Reviewers linked MH
with Wollstonecraft, with results more often hostile than...
Literary responses
Caroline Norton
The pamphlet was not well received: the public appeared to be suffering from compassion fatigue. In opposing CN
's plan of writing to the Times, Melbourne
called her a sobbing, moaning, and complaining woman...
Literary responses
Frances Sheridan
The novel in its first form was hugely successful: it brought FS
instant fame. Johnson
teasingly expressed doubts about her moral right to make your readers suffer so much.
Sheridan, Frances. “Introduction”. Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, edited by Jean Coates Cleary et al., World’s Classics, Oxford University Press.
But of readers whose responses survive, most were delighted. These included Sarah Harriet Burney
—who, however, thought (apparently along with plenty of others) that Catherine Ann Dorset
, sister of Charlotte Smith
, might be...
Literary responses
Ann Batten Cristall
The Critical Review discerned in the collection considerable merit and the hand of genius: so much so that it felt it safe to overlook a few blemishes (though it mentioned some for the sake...
Literary responses
Amelia Opie
The Critical Review introduced its laudatory notice by praising the current standard of women's poetry (a tradition, it says, less than a century old). It invokes the canonical names of Seward
, Barbauld
, and...
Literary responses
Julia Kavanagh
The Athenæum's review compared her skills favourably with those of Charlotte Smith
. However, it noted how far Smith's once high reputation had declined, and seemed to anticipate the same fate for Sybil's Second...
