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.
Quotations heading chapters come from Milton
and other mostly modern poets, including Charlotte Smith
and Mary Robinson
. Other inset poems may be EFC
's own.
McLeod, Deborah. The Minerva Press. University of Alberta.
The story opens as Portuguese peasants encounter a fainting...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Cobbold
EC
corresponded with members of the London scientific intelligentsia: Sir James Edward Smith
, first President of the Linnean Society
(who encouraged Charlotte Smith
to introduce botanical information into her novels, but proved singularly unhelpful...
Notable among Cowper's other friends were the Rev John Newton
(a former slave-trader who since his conversion had become a hellfire Evangelical preacher), Lady Austen
(who set him the writing task commemorated in the title...
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...
Textual Production
Anne Damer
An anonymous novel was published in three volumes by Johnson
, entitled Letters of Miss Riversdale, which Charlotte Smith
ascribed to AD
.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
2: 163
Textual Features
Anne Damer
With many suitors, Louisa would like permission to stay single, but she has a project for the conversion to Christianity of Mr Stanville, whom eventually she marries. (The similarity of this name to Stainville in...
EF
was well known to many of the English radicals of the 1790s: besides those already mentioned, she knew Charlotte Smith
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
.
Paul, Lissa. Eliza Fenwick, Early Modern Feminist. University of Delaware Press.
72
A particularly close and lifelong friend was Mary Hays
Textual Production
Eliza Fenwick
Charlotte Smith
knew of this work-in-progress on 26 July 1800, when she told Mary Hays
how she wished she could help EF
with money or moral support. On 31 October 1801 Hays noted that Thomas Underwood
Publishing
Elizabeth Gilding
The Westminster Magazine again printed a poem by Elizabeth Turner (formerly EG
) praising a woman poet: To Mrs [Charlotte] Smith
of Bignor Park, on Reading Her Poems lately Published (her Elegiac Sonnets of early June).
Pitcher, Edward W. Signatures and Pseudonyms of the Eighteenth-Century British Magazines: An Annotated Index in Three Volumes.
Textual Features
Ann Gomersall
AG
is remarkable not only for extending the novel's range out of the gentry into the mercantile class, but also in differentiating between various types of businessmen, more and less admirable, and various different attitudes...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anne Grant
This contains autobiographical fragments and insightful comments on other women writers. Objects of AG
's comment include Susan Ferrier
, Charlotte Smith
(whose poems AG
felt to be easy, flowing, and correct, but low on...
The contents include descriptive and melancholy sonnets, satire, autobiography, and politics (including a poem on the horrors of slavery, addressed to William Wilberforce
, and another about the sorrow of a woman whose lover has...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Smith, Charlotte. The Banished Man. T. Cadell, Jr. and W. Davies, 1794.
Smith, Charlotte. The Collected Letters of Charlotte Smith. Editor Stanton, Judith Phillips, Indiana University Press, 2003.
Smith, Charlotte. The Emigrants. T. Cadell, 1793.
Smith, Charlotte, and Mary Hays. The History of England. Richard Phillips, 1806.
Smith, Charlotte. The Natural History of Birds. J. Johnson, 1807.
Smith, Charlotte. The Old Manor House. J. Bell, 1793.
Smith, Charlotte. The Poems of Charlotte Smith. Editor Curran, Stuart, Oxford University Press, 1993.
Gayot de Pitaval, François. The Romance of Real Life. Translator Smith, Charlotte, T. Cadell, 1787.
Smith, Charlotte. The Wanderings of Warwick. J. Bell, 1794.
Smith, Charlotte. The Young Philosopher. T. Cadell, Jr. and W. Davies, 1798.
Smith, Charlotte. The Young Philosopher. Editor Kraft, Elizabeth, University Press of Kentucky, 1999.
Smith, Charlotte. What Is She?. T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1799.