Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Emily Brontë
-
Standard Name: Brontë, Emily
Birth Name: Emily Brontë
Pseudonym: Ellis Bell
Used Form: Emily Bronte
Used Form: Two
Emily Brontë
collaborated with her siblings on a body of juvenilia, and by herself wrote a small number of poems and a single surviving novel. Wuthering Heights is established as one of the most original and disturbing novels of the mid-nineteenth century. Its compelling imagery, sophisticated narrative technique, and powerful, indeed violent, story—part ghost story, part romance, part anatomy of social hierarchies and cultural conflict—details the enmity between two families on the Yorkshire moors that erupts when a strange child is adopted into one of them, and which is only resolved in the subsequent generation.
Towards the close of the book, EG
declines to pronounce on her subject: I cannot measure or judge of such a character as hers.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Editor Shelston, Alan, Penguin.
526
Yet the book as a whole cannot help but pass...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Gaskell
The Athenæum and others were positive about Gaskell's biography, although an anonymous review by E. S. Dallas
in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine suggested that the biographer had completely misread Emily Brontë
's reserve as evidence of...
Education
Mary Gawthorpe
Apprenticeship included some part-time attendance at the Pupil-Teacher Centre
in the LeedsSchool Board
offices. There MG
continued with largely the same subjects as at school, with the addition of French, educational theory, psychology, and...
Intertextuality and Influence
Stella Gibbons
SG
's characters are amusing caricatures of socialites, intellectuals, and rustics. Flora's city friend, the modern young widow Mrs Smiling, for instance, has a large collection of suitors and an even larger collection of brassières...
Textual Production
Rumer Godden
Years before, Rumer had hoped they might be the new Brontësisters
.
Chisholm, Anne. Rumer Godden, A Storyteller’s Life. Pan Books.
158
They felt they knew India better than most adult Anglo-Indians.
Performance of text
Elizabeth Goudge
The first of EG
's plays to be professionally staged, TheBrontësofHaworth, opened at the Charta Theatre
in London.
“Elizabeth Goudge Books”. Anglophile Books: British women authors.
HD's father encouraged her education, although he refused to allow her to attend art school. Instead, she was encouraged to study mathematics and was tutored by her brother Eric
. Eric also provided his sister...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Inchbald
A Simple Story was praised by no less a modern authority than Q. D. Leavis
,
and received a more recent accolade from Terry Castle
as the most elegant English fiction...
Health
Storm Jameson
SJ
's demanding work, travel, and personal commitments exacted a serious toll on her health. She contracted diphtheria as a young woman, probably when she nursed her son through it. Frequently exhausted, she also had...
Colenbrander, Joanna. A Portrait of Fryn. A. Deutsch.
33
Intertextuality and Influence
E. B. C. Jones
The book positions itself in relation to cultural, social and emotional markers that are not those of a majority in later times. Helen and Felicia read Northanger Abbey aloud, and Helen admits it to be...
Education
Jackie Kay
In her early years at school in Glasgow, JK
had problems with bullies who taunted her because of her skin colour. She retaliated privately by writing little poems of revenge.
“Writer’s ’revenge’ on school bullies”. BBC News.
At school she was...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Margaret Kennedy
Here Kennedy argues that entertainment and enjoyment are valuable aims for the novel. She maintains that the novelist is, in essence, a storyteller, but the storyteller-novelist has been excluded by a literary society that devalues...
Literary responses
Margaret Kennedy
Reviewers have likened Kennedy to Jane Austen
, one of her literary role models. In a review for the New York World, Beverley Nichols
stated that she would be a robust Jane Austen,...
