Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Lady Rachel Russell
-
Standard Name: Russell, Lady Rachel
Birth Name: Rachel Wriothesley
Styled: Lady Rachel Wriothesley
Married Name: Rachel Vaughan
Titled: Rachel, Lady Vaughan
Married Name: Rachel Russell
Titled: Rachel, Lady Russell
Indexed Name: Lady Rachel Russell
The reputation of LRR
's letters sprang at first from her husband's political fame, but she was a letter-writer of high quality in her own right. Surviving letters probably represent only a fraction of those she wrote. Like many intelligent women of her time and rank, she used writing not only to communicate with relations and friends, but also privately, to shape her religious practice and her sense of her own life. She left diaries, essays, a catechism, and Instructions for Children.
In the preface she declares that she sought to simply set before the young women of the present day examples of wives and mothers who have done their duty under difficulties and temptations; and if...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Isabella Neil Harwood
The second play in this volume, Lord and Lady Russell was met with much less interest than Elfinella. It is a historical drama set in the court of King Charles II
. The despicable...
MC
opens her preface with a kind of apology for not being a mother herself. Her history is attentive to women, both public and private. Of her three chapters on Queen Elizabeth
, she says,...
Textual Production
Mary Chandler
Another poem by MC
on the topic of choosing spinsterhood is A Letter to the Right Honourable, the Lady Russell
written at her Ladyship's Desire, on the Conversation at Breakfast.
Shuttleton, David. “’All Passion Extinguish’d’: The Case of Mary Chandler, 1687-1745”. Women’s Poetry in the Enlightenment: The Making of a Canon, 1730-1820, edited by Isobel Armstrong and Virginia Blain, St Martin’s Press, pp. 33-49.
39
This time the...
Textual Production
Dorothy Sidney, Countess of Sunderland
DSCS
was close to her son-in-law, and continued a correspondence with him years after her daughter's death. Her letters to Halifax were published by Mary Berry
in 1819, together with the letters of Lady Rachel Russell
Textual Production
Lydia Maria Child
In 1832 appeared The Biographies of Madame de Staël
and Madame Roland and The Biographies of Lady Russell
and Madame Guyon. The following year came Good Wives—which in later editions sometimes appeared as...
Textual Production
Isabella Neil Harwood
Elfinella, or, Home from Fairyland; Lord
and Lady Russell, one of Isabella Harwood
's most popular volumes of plays, was published by Ellis and White
, five months after it reached the stage.
Pall Mall Gazette. J. K. Sharpe.
3468 (30 March 1876)
Textual Production
Emma Marshall
She returned to literature (though she may not have thought of it as such) with In the Service of Rachel, Lady Russell
, A Story, 1893, and with Penshurst Castle in the time of...
Tighe, Mary. Keats and Mary Tighe. Editor Weller, Earle Vonard, Kraus Reprint Corporation.
308
and says that if she could resign herself to parting with her friends, then the bitterness of death were past
Tighe, Mary. Keats and Mary Tighe. Editor Weller, Earle Vonard, Kraus Reprint Corporation.
308
—citing the words of Lady Rachel Russell
's husband...
Textual Features
Lydia Maria Child
LMC
's first four subjects were all known for their writings and for their resistance to tyrannical authority, either political or religious, but she is more interested here in what she alleges to have been...
Textual Features
Susanna Watts
The many pictures in the volume include diagrams of the hold of a slave ship, I & Dash my Dog (a sketch), and prints of Hester Mulso Chapone
, Lady Rachel Russell
(with a copy...
Textual Features
Cassandra Cooke
The novel opens [t]owards the end of Oliver Cromwell
's usurpation,
Cooke, Cassandra. Battleridge. C. Cawthorn.
1: 1
among the Vesey family of Battleridge Castle (in the north of England, near one of the castles owned by Lady Anne Clifford
Textual Features
Frances Arabella Rowden
The second part opens with quotations from Cicero
and Voltaire
.
Rowden, Frances Arabella. The Pleasures of Friendship. A Poem.
47
It includes a picture of connubial love gone sour, turned to mutual wrongs, and mutual hate.
Rowden, Frances Arabella. The Pleasures of Friendship. A Poem.
63
Its examples of heroic friendship include...
Textual Features
Isabella Neil Harwood
In the play Lord Russell is first seen as he hears the news that the King has dissolved the parliament: he has Quite broken with his people, and to govern / Must needs oppress them...
Timeline
22 March 1683: A fire at the racing centre of Newmarket...
National or international item
22 March 1683
A fire at the racing centre of Newmarket preserved the lives of Charles II
and his brother
; by leaving early for London they avoided a planned assassination.
13 July 1683: William, Lord Russell (husband of the letter-writer...
National or international item
13 July 1683
William, Lord Russell
(husband of the letter-writer Lady Rachel
), stood trial for High Treason, accused of planning to assassinate the king
in an alleged Protestant Plot.
21 July 1683: William, Lord Russell, husband of the letter-writer...
National or international item
21 July 1683
William, Lord Russell
, husband of the letter-writer Lady Rachel Russell
, was beheaded in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
7 December 1683: Months after the execution of William, Lord...
National or international item
7 December 1683
Months after the execution of William, Lord Russell
(husband of Lady Rachel
), Algernon Sidney
met the same fate (after a search of his private papers), charged with Protestant extremism and plotting against the crown.
Texts
Russell, Lady Rachel. Letters of Lady Rachel Russell. Editor Sellwood, Thomas, E. and C. Dilly, 1773.
Russell, Lady Rachel, and William, Lord Russell. Letters of Lady Rachel Russell. Editor Sellwood, Thomas, J. Mawman, 1801.
Berry, Mary, and Lady Rachel Russell. Some Account of the Life of Rachael Wriothesley Lady Russell. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1819.
