Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Hester Lynch Piozzi
-
Standard Name: Piozzi, Hester Lynch
Birth Name: Hester Lynch Salusbury
Married Name: Hester Lynch Thrale
Married Name: Hester Lynch Piozzi
Pseudonym: H: L: T.
Pseudonym: An Old Acquaintance of the Public
Pseudonym: An Old Woman
Self-constructed Name: H: L: P.
Used Form: Hester Thrale
Hester Lynch Thrale, later Hester Lynch Piozzi
, was by inclination and practice a woman of letters as well as a woman of the world. She loved recording facts and details; she was an incisive critic (of real learning) and a great entertainer. She wrote poems, translations, essays, letters, journals, memoirs, and works of scholarship, and she published both during the later eighteenth and during the earlier nineteenth century.
Hester Thrale
was an exception to the consensus of opinion (shared by Johnson) that FR
was indecisive: she wrote admiringly of FR's presence of mind in saving a dinner party threatened by the bad behaviour...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Frances Reynolds
FR
pays particular attention to his relations with women, individually and in general: Johnson set a higher value upon female friendship than, perhaps, most men.
Reynolds, Frances. “Recollections of Dr. Johnson”. Johnsonian Miscellanies, edited by George Birkbeck Hill and George Birkbeck Hill, Clarendon Press, pp. 2: 250 - 300.
2: 252
She remarks on the paternal affection he entertained...
Health
Mary Robinson
MR
was still young when her health collapsed completely.
Highfill thinks the crucial episode which brought on her physical collapse was connected with the hardship of theatrical touring in the English provinces.
Highfill, Philip H. et al. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press.
13: 36
Tarleton's...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Naomi Royde-Smith
NRS
says she has often found that my own selection of relevant detail has lighted on facts passed over as insignificant by other writers.
Royde-Smith, Naomi. The Private Life of Mrs. Siddons. V. Gollancz.
11
She hopes to place her subject in a light, possibly...
Friends, Associates
Anna Seward
Acquainted with Hester Piozzi
(and an admirer of her wit),
Seward, Anna. Letters of Anna Seward. Editor Constable, Archibald, Vol.
6 vols.
, A. Constable.
2: 102
AS
was long but less warmly acquainted with Johnson
. She accused him both of malice (repeatedly) and of liking only worshippers...
Textual Production
Anna Seward
She had herself carefully revised her twelve manuscript volumes of copies, and had left them to a publisher. Scott (himself among her correspondents) said he would not help to perpetuate such gossip as the letters...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anna Seward
AS
's correspondence often deals with literary matters as well as with social matters and personalities. She writes with astonishing freedom to Hester Piozzi
about the latter's travel book Observations and Reflections: not only...
Family and Intimate relationships
Susan Smythies
Of Susan's identified siblings (apart from those who died young) William was born in November 1722, Humphrey or Humphry in January 1724, Ann in February 1725, Elizabeth in August 1727; from the first marriage there...
Education
Mary Somerville
Flipping casually through a ladies' fashion magazine when she was about fourteen years old, Mary had her curiosity caught by an algebraic expression in a puzzle. She was told that the variables were Algebra...
Friends, Associates
Germaine de Staël
One of her associates in her English visit was the future husband
of Frances Burney
. Burney thought her a woman of the first abilities, very much in the style of Mrs Thrale but with...
Textual Production
Leah Sumbel
It is often said (for instance by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography) that Topham's main aim in this venture was to boost her career. The World was known for featuring personal attacks on...
Textual Features
Leah Sumbel
Another of its features was the exchange of Della Cruscan verse between Robert Merry
and Hannah Cowley
, and because of Merry's friendship with Hester Lynch Piozzi
, Piozzi's movements were advertised in The World.
Jenkins, Annibel. “<span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘j’>The World</span> and All the People in It: London, 1787-1789”. Boundaries, Margins and Frames: Ways of Seeing and Knowing the Eighteenth Century: Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SEASECS) Conference, Chapel Hill, NC.
DW
's selection, though, demonstrates a serious interest in women's literary and feminist history. Of the selections whose authors can be identified, almost half are women. Though Marguerite, Lady Blessington
, doyenne of the albums...
Wealth and Poverty
Anna Williams
There were fifty stipends on offer and more than five hundred people applied. Moreover, the terms of the charity turned out to exclude Welsh people. All her life Williams found personal friends more helpful than...
