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.
She backs this pleasure in modernity with a remarkable grasp of former female history and of the women's literary tradition in English and its contexts. She mentions the Greek foremother Sappho
, the patriotic heroism...
Her model for the sonnet, as well as for the use of male erotic voices from Petrarch
and Goethe
, was Charlotte Smith
, though AB
's tone is more unrestrained and impassioned than Smith's.
Elfenbein, Andrew. Romantic Genius: The Prehistory of a Homosexual Role. Columbia University Press.
135-6
Intertextuality and Influence
Eliza Haywood
A more recent generation of feminist scholars has succeeded in locating EH
in the developing tradition of women's fiction. Critic Mary Anne Schofield
has argued that her heroines are feisty feminists. Paula Backscheider
points out...
Leisure and Society
Jane Austen
Art historian Richard James Wheeler
, a strong supporter of the Rice portrait, also argued that a watercolour sketch by James Stanier Clarke
, the Prince of Wales's librarian (a full-length portrait of only six...
Leisure and Society
Henrietta Sykes
In her diary for 1813 recorded New Year celebrations with much conviviality: she and her guests, she wrote, danced like lunatics. She also listed good novels she had recently read. They included The School for...
Literary responses
Sarah Harriet Burney
Charles Burney
, too, slighted his youngest daughter's work in comparison with the elder's.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. “Editor’s Introduction”. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney, edited by Lorna J. Clark, Georgia University Press.
lxii
Jane Austen
later noted that Clarentine seemed good on the first reading, not so good on the second, and unnatural...
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...
Literary responses
Ann Radcliffe
The Italian won for AR
the accolade of praise from Thomas James Matthias
, scholar, editor, and librarian at Buckingham Palace, who invoked the shade of Ariosto
to honour her in the same place...
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
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
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
Jane Austen
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
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.