Grossman, Joyce. “Social Protest and the Mid-Century Novel: Mary Collyers The History of Betty BarnesEighteenth-Century Women: Studies in their Lives, Work, and Culture, edited by Linda V. Troost, Vol.
1
, 2001, pp. 165-84. 165
Sarah Fielding
-
Standard Name: Fielding, Sarah
Birth Name: Sarah Fielding
Pseudonym: A Lady
Pseudonym: The Author of David Simple
SF
, best known as a mid-eighteenth-century novelist, tried a range of other genres as well: history, criticism, a play, a translation, and a landmark children's book which is both a work of pedagogy and commonly billed as the first school story for girls. Her reputation is gradually emerging from the shadow of her brother Henry
's and enabling recognition of her status as a woman of letters, and her pivotal position in the history of the novel.
Connections
| Connections | Author name Sort descending | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| Textual Production | Mary Collyer | An anonymous novel appeared entitled The History of Betty Barnes: it has sometimes been attributed to Sarah Fielding
, but is actually by MC
, as literary historian Joyce Grossman
has shown. Grossman, Joyce. “Social Protest and the Mid-Century Novel: Mary Collyers The History of Betty BarnesEighteenth-Century Women: Studies in their Lives, Work, and Culture, edited by Linda V. Troost, Vol. 1 , 2001, pp. 165-84. |
| Literary responses | Mary Collyer | Brian Alderson
noted that this may be the earliest known publication of secular stories for children in English, and called it the pearl of the Ludford Box— qtd. in Immel, Andrea. “A Christmass-Box. Mary Homebred and Mary Collyer: Connecting the Dots”. Childrens Books History Society Newsletter, No. 94, Dec. 2009, pp. 1-4. 1 |
| Reception | Maria Edgeworth | ME
had more lasting influence than her predecessors on the development of the girls'-school-story tradition in English, though Sarah Fielding
's The Governess stands at the head of the genre. |
| Literary responses | Amelia B. Edwards | Henry Fothergill Chorley
in the Athenæum faulted the book as being something close to a textbook under the guise of entertainment. Young people, he argued, resent such books as engines of oppression. Athenæum. J. Lection. 1788 (1862): 151 |
| Birth | Henry Fielding | He was the elder brother of Sarah Fielding
, and second cousin of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
(their grandfathers were brothers). |
| Textual Production | Phebe Gibbes | It was advertised in this month and re-advertised several years after its first appearance. The full title is Modern Seduction, or Innocence Betrayed: Consisting of Several Histories of the Principal Magdalens, Received into that Charity... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Phebe Gibbes | She supplies a kind of cast list of characters, and says she has written A Dramatic Novel Gibbes, Phebe. The Niece; or, The History of Sukey Thornby. F. Noble, 1788, 3 vols. prelims Gibbes, Phebe. The Niece; or, The History of Sukey Thornby. F. Noble, 1788, 3 vols. prelims |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Elizabeth Sarah Gooch | ESG
quotes on her title-page from James Hammond
and early in her first volume from Samuel Johnson
(no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the author). qtd. in Gooch, Elizabeth Sarah. The Life of Mrs Gooch. Printed for the authoress and sold by C. and G. Kearsley, 1792, 3 vols. 1: 11 |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Sarah Green | Literary discussion spills over from the preface into the text. The Rev. Edward Marsham, surprisingly for one of his profession, finds Hannah More
's Coelebs too religious; he prefers canonical novelists who teach virtue and... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Elizabeth Hamilton | EH
opens with a challenge to the ignorant, since only they might suppose her subject-matter here to be unfeminine. She combines two topics: Indian or Hindu society and English, allegedly Christian society, with special emphasis... |
| Textual Production | Elizabeth Hamilton | This was published at Bath and London. EH
did serious historical research for this book, reading all the Roman history she could find in English and even commissioning translations. There was already women's work... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Eliza Haywood | This book's full title, with its reference to a Search after Happiness, sounds like a possible source for Sarah Fielding
's David Simple, whose hero is depicted in Search of a Real Friend... |
| Literary responses | Eliza Haywood | In the Monthly Review, Ralph Griffiths
passed a judgement which was inflected against Betsy Thoughtless by issues of gender. He guessed that the author was female because of the novel's attention to matters of... |
| Reception | Eliza Haywood | EH
's reputation during her lifetime and immediately afterwards (bolstered by Pope's image of her in the Dunciad) was of the quintessential practitioner of the novel, seen as low-grade entertainment both intellectually and morally... |
| Intertextuality and Influence | Elizabeth Inchbald | The story is set in London, where a brother and sister are starving, and are helped by a man who appears benevolent but actually hopes to seduce the sister. The pair turn out not... |
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