Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Germaine de Staël
-
Standard Name: Staël, Germaine de
Birth Name: Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker
Married Name: Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël
Used Form: Germaine de Stael
GS
is remembered primarily for her political activism and the salons she established following the French Revolution; history, politics, and culture were certainly among her frequent literary subjects. The same interests inform her highly successful and influential novels, some short stories and, less significantly, plays. Other writings include literary criticism and personal letters.
Winegarten, Renee. Mme de Staël. Berg.
81
Her anglophilia and her attention to English literature and culture gave her particular importance for British women writers.
This preface is headed by two Latin words (one with a faulty grammatical ending) from Ovid
's description of chaos. SG
slams both male and female novelists, chiefly authors of gothic or horrid novels and...
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...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Grant
She also admitted a hope that, if published, the journal might turn a profit for her children, but felt ambivalent about becoming a published author.
Grant, Elizabeth. “Introduction”. The Highland Lady in Ireland, edited by Andrew Tod, Canongate, p. vii - xiii.
ix
She wrote that she would rather no one had...
Occupation
William Godwin
The imprint M. J. Godwin and Company was launched the following year. The business flourished, becoming almost a literary salon like that of Joseph Johnson
: visitors included Germaine de Staël
. It remained, however...
Textual Features
Mrs E. M. Foster
The novel parodies Germaine de Staël
's Corinne (which had appeared in French in 1807, in English in 1808). Chapters are supplied with epigraphs: some standard choices like Pope
and Cowper
, but also texts...
Textual Production
Catherine Fanshawe
The letter that CF
wrote about her first meeting with Germaine de Staël
(also, apparently, her first meeting with Byron
) concentrates firmly on de Staël: Eloquence is a great word, but not too big...
Friends, Associates
Catherine Fanshawe
When CF
met both Byron
and Germaine de Staël
in spring 1814 at a dinner party at the house of Sir Humphry Davy
, she was unimpressed by Byron and his outpourings of radical opinion...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Catherine Fanshawe
One of the poems, a delightful Ode which imitates or parodies several well-known passages in various works by Gray
, was written not by CF
but by her friend Mary Berry
, some time before...
Intertextuality and Influence
Emily Faithfull
The novel brings together the fashionable upper-class society which EF
had experienced in her youth, with the question of women's employment which was the burning issue of her working life. She acknowledges the work of...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
Her close friendship with Germaine de Staël
(carried on largely by letter) is a marker of her European orientation.
Textual Production
Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
Her subjects include such remarkable women as Bess of Hardwick
and her own friend Germaine de Staël
.
Publishing
Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
Elizabeth Devonshire was a prolific and expressive letter-writer. Letters of the two duchesses, Elizabeth and Georgiana, were edited in 1898 by Vere Foster
. In 1980 Elizabeth's unpublished correspondence in French with de Staël
...
Intertextuality and Influence
George Eliot
The narrator of The Mill on the Floss is not unproblematically masculine, but writes from time to time as a woman. The novel begins with an unusually intense and nuanced study of childhood. Maggie Tulliver...
Intertextuality and Influence
Maria Edgeworth
She designed it to combat the influence of romantic fiction, and to answer Germaine de Staël
's Delphine and Goethe
's Sorrows of Werther.
Butler, Marilyn. Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography. Clarendon.
318-19
Leonora is ME
's next ideal domestic woman after...
Textual Features
Helen Craik
Authors quoted on HC
's title-page include La Rochefoucauld
. Mary Robinson
's Walsingham is quoted in volume two and supplies the epigraph for volume three.
Craciun, Adriana, and Kari E. Lokke, editors. “The New Cordays: Helen Craik and British Representations of Charlotte Corday, 1793-1800”. Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution, State University of New York Press, pp. 193-32.
228n47
The story opens shortly before the French Revolution...
