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.
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...
Publishing
Mary Wollstonecraft
It was dedicated to the French statesman Talleyrand
, a supporter of the Revolution and the reputed lover of Germaine de Staël
. She produced a second, revised edition by the end of the year...
Friends, Associates
Anna Williams
Williams enjoyed cordial relations with other members of Johnson's circle, like Elizabeth Carter
(who helped with subscriptions for Williams's book when Johnson was dragging his feet) and Hester Thrale
(who contributed). Carter counted her a...
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 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...
Friends, Associates
Jane Warton
Some of her brothers' friends (notably John Mulso
and the naturalist Gilbert White
) were friends of Jane's;
Reid, Hugh. “Jenny: The Fourth Warton”. Notes and Queries, Vol.
continuous series 231
, No. 1, pp. 84-92.
85
through John she became a friend of his sister, later Hester Mulso Chapone
. Hester cryed...
Occupation
Jane Warton
JW
found herself a governess position after her father's death.
Reid, Hugh. “Jenny: The Fourth Warton”. Notes and Queries, Vol.
continuous series 231
, No. 1, pp. 84-92.
86
On 24 January 1750 John Mulso
reported that she had a new post with a Lady Sherrard
at Hampton Court, where he looked...
Intertextuality and Influence
Lady Mary Walker
This novel reads like a conduct book, or a rather muted feminist manifesto. Its action-packed plot (in which young people grow up and look for mates, and a woman married to a second husband discovers...
Textual Features
Sarah Trimmer
In addition to Catharine Cappe
's work on Sunday schools and versions of fairy stories by Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy
, the magazine reviewed work by a whole library of didactic, pedagogical, or improving writers, reprinted as...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins
Though Theresa writes most of the letters in the book, the opening one, as often in women's epistolary novels at this date, is an exchange between men. Tomlins, however, does not attempt to capture a...
Textual Features
Angela Thirkell
The first house is that of her Burne-Jonesgrandparents
: The Grange, North End Lane, Fulham.
Richard Graves may have been disappointed, for the introduction and early lives are substantially the same as in the 1778 version which he had already read (though Hester Mulso Chapone
has been added to the...
Present-day critics like Stuart Curran
think highly of CT
as a poet. Rhoda Zuk
in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography praises her as a feminist and a rational moralist, and argues that the dismissal...
Textual Features
Mary Scott
In the dedication she mentions a few new publications that came to her attention too late to be discussed in the poem itself. These include works by Hester Chapone
, Hannah More
, and Phillis Wheatley
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.