Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Gunning
-
Standard Name: Gunning, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Gunning
Pseudonym: Miss Gunning
Nickname: Gunnilda
Nickname: Miss Charlemagne
Nickname: Miss Charly
Married Name: Elizabeth Plunkett
EG
published, mostly during the later eighteenth century, a number of novels (including the one of her late mother
's which she finished), translations, a children's book, and two unacted plays. Many appeared before her marriage, and there has been some confusion with her mother's work. Both Gunnings are acutely class-conscious, centring many plots on wished-for ascent to the nobility (whose vices as a class they nevertheless strongly condemn): a motif which EG
neatly reverses in her last.
It was printed at Norwich and sold through London publishers. The subscription list was impressive, including Anna Letitia Barbauld
, John Brand (presumably HB
's brother) of Hemingston Hall in Suffolk, who took twenty copies...
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Charlotte Bury
Lady Charlotte was therefore a first cousin of Elizabeth Gunning
(also a novelist); she was just into her teens at the time of the scandal of Elizabeth's alleged engagement to Charlotte's eldest full brother, the...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sarah Green
M. G. Lewis
is a more complicated case, treated with some nuance. SG
admires The Monk but feels that after that Lewis's real talent was obscured by the baneful influence of German fiction: she agrees...
Wealth and Poverty
Susannah Gunning
SG
's estranged husband
died abroad, leaving her and her daughter
his entailed—but mortgaged—Irish estates.
Gantz, Ida. The Pastel Portrait. Cresset Press.
173, 175
Textual Production
Susannah Gunning
SG
printed for the author her defence of her daughter
and attack on her husband
: A Letter . . . Address'd to His Grace the Duke of Argyll.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
2d ser. 1 (1791): 341
Textual Production
Susannah Gunning
SG
's final work, The Heir Apparent, A Novel, was posthumously published with her daughter
's revision and additions.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
2d ser. 35 (1802): 477
Family and Intimate relationships
Susannah Gunning
SG
's only child, Elizabeth Gunning
, born in 1769 (later, by marriage, Elizabeth Plunkett), became a novelist like her mother.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Susannah Gunning
SG
defends my glorious child . . . . my proud heart's darling,Elizabeth Gunning
, against the efforts of art or machination to besmirch as fair a fame as ever yet has graced the...
Textual Features
Susannah Gunning
This historical tale, of a Roman father, Virginius, who exerts the ultimate control over his daughter's sexual destiny by killing her, carries oblique, disturbing reference to Elizabeth Gunning
's courtship story. In the poem the...
Family and Intimate relationships
Susannah Gunning
In the notorious family quarrel over the courtship of Elizabeth Gunning
, SG
sided with her daughter against her husband
.
Gantz, Ida. The Pastel Portrait. Cresset Press.
121ff
Occupation
Harriett Jay
HJ
made her London debut the next month, on 22 December, in Buchanan's The Nine Days Queen. In this too she took on the lead role (this time as Lady Jane Grey
). Her...
Textual Features
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
All the mock eclogues (written, like most of Montagu's more ambitious poetry, in heroic couplets with the occasional triplet) target actual individuals and refer to events which were gossip of the day. Monday, Wednesday...
Fraser's Magazine later ascribed to JP
an anonymous gothic romance published this month, entitled The Spirit of the Elbe and dedicated to Elizabeth Gunning
. Scholar Nicholas A. Joukovsky
confirmed this ascription.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
1: 772
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Joukovsky, Nicholas A. “Jane Porters First Novel: The Evidence of an Unpublished Letter”. Notes and Queries, Vol.
235
, pp. 15-16.
15-17
Friends, Associates
Mary Robinson
MR
remained devoted to the idea of female friendship. She met the artist Maria Cosway
in France and they became firm friends. In her last months she wrote to the novelist Elizabeth Gunning
to sympathise...
Timeline
: The Gunning sisters arrived in London from...
Building item
Summer1751
The Gunning sisters arrived in London from Ireland, and created a sensation with their beauty: Maria
was aged around seventeen and Elizabeth
was a year younger.
By 22 July 1797: William Beckford published a second and more...
Women writers item
By 22 July 1797
William Beckford
published a second and more marked burlesque attack on women's writing: Azemia: A Descriptive and Sentimental Novel. Interspersed with Pieces of Poetry.
Texts
Gunning, Elizabeth. Dangers through Life. J. Ebers, 1810.
Gunning, Elizabeth. Family Stories. B. Tabart, 1802.
Gunning, Elizabeth. Lord Fitzhenry. J. Bell, 1794.
Auvigny, Jean du Castre d’, and Pierre François Guyot Desfontaines. Memoirs of Madame De Barneveldt. Translator Gunning, Elizabeth, S. Low; E. Booker, 1795.
Jeanne-Isabelle-Pauline Polier de Bottens, baronne de Montolieu,. Sentimental Anecdotes. Translator Gunning, Elizabeth, C. Chapple, 1811.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The Exile of Erin. B. Crosby, 1808.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The Foresters. Sampson Low, 1796.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The Gipsy Countess. T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1799.
Gunning, Susannah, and Elizabeth Gunning. The Heir Apparent. J. Ridgway and H. D. Symonds, 1802.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The Man of Fashion. M. Jones, 1815.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The Orphans of Snowdon. H. Lowndes, 1797.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The Packet. J. Bell, 1794.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The Packet. Burnside; J. Bell, 1794.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The Village Library. B. Crosby, 1802.
Gunning, Elizabeth. The War-Office. Published for the author, 1803.