Mary Jones

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Standard Name: Jones, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Jones
Pseudonym: A Young Lady of Oxford
Nickname: Chantress
MJ , writing in the mid and later eighteenth century, is remarkable for publishing her work, although it was written in a private context. She is still under-rated both as a poet and as a letter-writer.
Title-page of Mary Jones's "Miscellanies in Prose and Verse", published with her name at Oxford, 1750.
Title-page of Mary Jones's "Miscellanies", published at Oxford in 1750.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Samuel Johnson
Johnson had a talent for friendship which he kept well exercised: the names mentioned here represent only a selection of his friendships. His early London friends, whom he met during a comparatively poorly documented period...
Friends, Associates Charlotte Lennox
She met Sarah Fielding at Richardson's house, and became friendly also with Henry Fielding , Saunders Welch (the philanthropist, who later offered her employment), and Lord Orrery . She was presumably the Mrs Lenox with...
Friends, Associates Sarah Dixon
Perhaps from her time in London, SD made some literary relationships. She was a good friend of Elizabeth Carter , and she subscribed to Mary Jones 's Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, published in 1750.
Messenger, Ann. Pastoral Tradition and the Female Talent: Studies in Augustan Poetry. AMS Press, 2001.
140
Nicholls, C. S., editor. The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons. Oxford University Press, 1993.
Literary responses Mary Latter
The Critical gave the book a one-paragraph review, noting ML 's misfortunes, her setting reviewers at defiance, and some strokes of genius in her writing.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
8 (1759): 171
One reviewer compared her unfavourably with such...
Publishing Mary Masters
This volume was printed for the Author. Its 833 subscribers (for 903 copies)
qtd. in
Fleeman, John David, and James McLaverty. A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson. Clarendon Press, 2000, 2 vols.
1: 409-10
included Samuel Johnson , Mrs Gardiner of Snow-Hill, Thomas Birch , a John Cockburne who may well have...
Reception Mary Barber
Mary Chandler responded with praise of MB 's Lines with Wit and Humour fraught, / Pure as her Morals, sprightly as her Thought.
qtd. in
Budd, Adam. “’Merit in Distress’: The Troubled Success of Mary Barber”. Review of English Studies, Vol.
53
, May 2002, pp. 204-27.
205
Another English fellow-poet, Mary Jones (to whom Barber's Poems were lent...
Textual Features Dorothea Du Bois
After seven pages on grammar, she offers pattern letters: those in verse are in effect an anthology of epistolary poems by women, a patriotically generous selection of Irish writers (Mary Monck , Mary Barber
Textual Production Jan Morris
Morris was writing too early to know of the existence of that splendid Oxford satirist Alicia D'Anvers , or to include in a section called Port and PrejudiceMary Jones 's early-eighteenth-century fantasy of a...
Textual Production Susanna Blamire
It must be remembered that, in a manner fitting the ballad tradition of unascribed authorship, SB and Catherine Gilpin often composed poetry together, and that Gilpin , as well as Blamire, sometimes composed alone. The...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Catherine Hutton
The issue of female fame arises through Charlotte's admiration for the poet Mary Jones . She says she doesn't expect her correspondent to have heard of Jones although the latter possesses genius and depth of...

Timeline

By May 1754: John Duncombe published The Feminiad. A Poem,...

Building item

By May 1754

John Duncombe published The Feminiad. A Poem, which celebrates the achievements of women writers with strict attention to their support for conventional morality.
Griffiths, Ralph, 1720 - 1803, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
10: 371-2

By July 1755: Thomas Amory published Memoirs of the Lives...

Writing climate item

By July 1755

Thomas Amory published Memoirs of the Lives of Several Ladies of Great Britain (an odd, ragbag work which is not, however, history or biography, but is generally classed as a novel).
Griffiths, Ralph, 1720 - 1803, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
13 (1755): 131

January 1756: The Critical Review, or Annals of Literature,...

Writing climate item

January 1756

The Critical Review, or Annals of Literature, a monthly, began publishing under the editorship of Tobias Smollett , ostensibly by a Society of Gentlemen.
Mahon, Penny. “In Sermon and Story: contrasting anti-war rhetoric in the work of Anna Barbauld and Amelia Opie”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
7
, No. 1, 2000, pp. 23-38.
35 n8
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

April 1761-May 1762: Andrew Kippis edited, and Ralph Griffiths...

Writing climate item

April 1761-May 1762

Andrew Kippis edited, and Ralph Griffiths published, a periodical called the Library; or, Moral and Critical Magazine.
Forster, Antonia. Email about Mary Jones to Isobel Grundy. 25 Apr. 2005.

Texts

Jones, Mary. Epistle to the Right Honourable Lady Aubrey Beauclerk, in memory of her Lord. 1743.
Jones, Mary. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. Dodsley, 1750.
Jones, Mary. The Lass at the Brow of the Hill. 1785.