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.
qtd. in
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, 1990.
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.
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.
qtd. in
Sheridan, Frances. “Introduction”. Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, edited by Jean Coates Cleary et al., World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, 1995.
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, 1997.
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...
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.
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...
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
284
Keen, Paul. “Review”. Eighteenth Century Fiction, Vol.
14
, No. 2, Jan. 2002, pp. 229-35.
234
Kelly, Gary. Women, Writing, and Revolution 1790-1827. Clarendon, 1993.
47
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...
Publishing
Mary Hays
MH
wrote a 22-page article on Charlotte Smith
for the 1800-1 issue of British Public Characters. She contributed a number of essays over a period of years for this annual series published by Richard Phillips
Publishing
Anna Hume
The author's name appears respectfully as Mris [i.e. Mistress] Anna Hume. The main title-page prints Love, Chastitie, and Death one below the other and brackets them. The Triumph of Chastitie and The...
Publishing
Charlotte Brooke
Her father had cherished a never-executed project for a history of ancient Irish literature.
Ashley, Leonard R. N. et al. “Introduction”. Reliques of Irish Poetry, Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1970, p. v - xv.
vi
She had issued Proposals for this work the year before publication. The Houghton Library
copy of the Proposals incorporates a...
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. 2004.
Publishing
Sarah Harriet Burney
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, 1997.
130
and my long plague.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney. Editor Clark, Lorna J., University of Georgia Press, 1997.
153
By October 1811 she felt she had her plot organised and almost all her allocations of...
Reception
Rosina Bulwer Lytton Baroness Lytton
Her husband, Edward Bulwer (later Bulwer Lytton)
, was embarrassed by Cheveley, seeing himself in the portrait of Lord De Clifford and his predilection for governesses,
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
119
and tried to block the novel's production...
Reception
Adelaide O'Keeffe
The Monthly Review was on the whole complimentary. It judged the novel to be original and entertaining, though it complained of a few Hibernicisms and grammatical errors. It concentrated, oddly, on the Don Zulvago plot...
Reception
Anne Plumptre
Antoinette was well reviewed. The Critical hailed a novel which neither endangered its readers' morals nor bored them with constant moralising. It dropped hints about the author's identity which amounted to puffing, saying it believed...
