Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Hester Mulso Chapone
-
Standard Name: Chapone, Hester Mulso
Birth Name: Hester Mulso
Married Name: Hester Chapone
Nickname: Yes Papa
Nickname: Heck
Pseudonym: Y
Pseudonym: G.
Indexed Name: Hester Mulso Chapone
Used Form: Mrs Chapone
As a young woman Hester Mulso (later HMC
) was a forceful arguer against social injustice meted out to women, but her enduring reputation as a writer and Bluestocking is as a staid, conservative moralist and dispenser of advice. She wrote letters, essays, poems, and conduct literature.
FR
pays particular attention to his relations with women, individually and in general: Johnson set a higher value upon female friendship than, perhaps, most men.
Reynolds, Frances. “Recollections of Dr. Johnson”. Johnsonian Miscellanies, edited by George Birkbeck Hill and George Birkbeck Hill, Clarendon Press, pp. 2: 250 - 300.
2: 252
She remarks on the paternal affection he entertained...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Helena Wells
HW
says she has more respect for the upper classes than some of our modern reformists.
Wells, Helena. Letters on Subjects of Importance to the Happiness of Young Females. L. Peacock; W. Creech.
7
She recommends reading poetry and history, not novels: Novel reading tends to enervate the mind. We rise from...
Textual Production
Frances Brooke
There are in fact further (though highly speculative) grounds to suspect an involvement of FB
(lately Frances Moore) in The World. A set of it now in the Bodleian Library
has had contributors' names...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Heyrick
She printed this for the Author,
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Familiar Letters Addressed to Children and Young Persons of the Middle Ranks. Darton, Harvey and Darton.
title-page
which means she took the risk and would keep the profit after paying her publisher, Darton, Harvey and Darton
. (A Leicester bookseller was also listed on...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Carter
With only six people besides Johnson appearing in The Rambler, EC
's two papers are the largest outside contribution. The six also include Catherine Talbot
and Hester Mulso Chapone
. A second essay by...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Carter
Apart from her prowess in intellectual genres, EC
was an indefatigable letter-writer. Catherine Talbot urged her in 1763 to circulate if not to publish her letters. In 1807 the two-volume edition of Hester Mulso Chapone
Textual Production
Hannah More
Of a total of 114 tracts, HM
wrote fifty herself. Her sisters Sally
and Patty
contributed (Patty with a single tract), as did the Clapham Sect
, Hester Mulso Chapone
(Mary Wood the Housemaid...
Though most of her letters to Samuel Richardson
are mainly domestic in content, those of the 1750s (on the composition of his novels and all kinds of gender issues arising from that) may quite fairly...
Textual Features
Susanna Watts
The many pictures in the volume include diagrams of the hold of a slave ship, I & Dash my Dog (a sketch), and prints of Hester Mulso Chapone
, Lady Rachel Russell
(with a copy...
Textual Features
Eliza Fenwick
For this anthology EF
gathered mostly improving pedagogical material, drawing on revered literary names like Shakespeare
and Milton
, as well as more recent and controversial writers like Thomas Chatterton
and Helen Maria Williams
...
Textual Features
Mary Wollstonecraft
Though only about twenty percent of its extracts are written by women (the same proportion as from the Bible),
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
501
this book is feminist in its emphasis on the virtue of independent judgement as...
Textual Features
Sarah Green
The tone of the work is conservative, leavened with an intelligent concern for development of independent thinking. Topics of various letters include Conduct and Conversation, Forbearance, Chastity, Truth, Employment of Time...
Textual Features
Anne Thackeray Ritchie
The title of the Blackstick Papers alludes to the character of the Fairy Blackstick from her father
's Rose and the Ring: she places her essays under the kindly tutelage
Ritchie, Anne Thackeray. Blackstick Papers. Books for Libraries Press.
3-4
of this spirit...
Timeline
March 1748: The Poems of Thomas Warton the elder were...
7 November 1752-9 March 1754: The self-educated John Hawkesworth edited...
Writing climate item
7 November 1752-9 March 1754
The self-educated John Hawkesworth
edited and published an essay-periodical called the Adventurer, on the model of Johnson
's Rambler.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
28 November 1776: The otherwise unidentified Mrs H. Cartwright...
Women writers item
28 November 1776
The otherwise unidentified Mrs H. Cartwright
wrote the dedication to Elizabeth Montagu
of her first work, Letters on Female Education Addressed to a Married Lady, which appeared early the next year.
Texts
Chapone, Hester Mulso. A Letter to a New-Married Lady. E. and C. Dilly, and J. Walter, 1777.
Chapone, Hester Mulso. Letters on the Improvement of the Mind. J. Walter, 1773.
Chapone, Hester Mulso. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. E. and C. Dilly, and J. Walter, 1775.
Chapone, Hester Mulso. The Posthumous Works of Mrs. Chapone. John Murray, 1807.
