Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Maria Edgeworth
-
Standard Name: Edgeworth, Maria
Birth Name: Maria Edgeworth
Pseudonym: M. E.
Pseudonym: M. R. I. A.
ME
wrote, during the late eighteenth century and especially the early nineteenth century, long and short fiction for adults and children, as well as works about the theory and practice of pedagogy. Her reputation as an Irish writer, and as the inventor of the regional novel, has never waned; it was long before she became outmoded as a children's writer; her interest as a feminist writer is finally being explored.
Mary (Wright) Sewell
was a highly successful writer of didactic poetry and moral tales for children. Her sentimental ballad Mother's Last Words (1860), sold over one million copies. A follower of educators Richard Lovell Edgeworth
Education
Mary Russell Mitford
MRM
was said to have learned to read by the time she was three. In January 1806 she got through fifty-five volumes, including books by Sarah Harriet Burney
, Maria Edgeworth
, Elizabeth Hamilton
,...
Education
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
EBB
's early immersion in fairy stories and popular tales was followed by a more ambitious course of reading that began around the age of seven with history, classical poetry, and some of Shakespeare
's...
Education
Marie Belloc Lowndes
MBL
's formal schooling was minimal. Mrs Shiel, who ran a class she attended which catered mostly to children of Canons of Westminster, claimed to be a follower of Pestalozzi
, yet mocked Marie for...
Education
Harriet Beecher Stowe
At the age of six Harriet Beecher began attending a primary school. Then, at the age of eight, she entered the Litchfield Female Academy
, a boarding school founded by Sarah Pierce
in 1792. One...
Education
Edna Lyall
Since the cousin with whom she shared lessons was three years older, Ada Ellen read a good many books at that time which must have been far beyond . . . [her] powers. At twelve...
Education
Elizabeth Grant
EG
refers to a number of texts that influenced her as a child. She learned to read by the age of three, taught by loving aunts, and remembered in particular Puss in Boots, Bluebeard...
Education
Catherine Carswell
After her discovery of literature, CC
's early reading included many pious books: Bunyan
's Pilgrim's Progress, Foxe
's Book of Martyrs, and Lives of the Saints. She also read widely in...
Education
Angela Thirkell
Initially, Angela was educated at home, where her mother began teaching her to read on her third birthday. She also had a succession of French and German governesses, who taught her French and German as...
Education
Georgiana Fullerton
She could read by four-and-a-half, and recalls an early admiration for hymns by Anna Letitia Barbauld
and Maria Edgeworth
. Julius Cæsar, the first Shakespearean
play that she saw, left a lasting impression. Later...
Education
Mary Cowden Clarke
MCC
later remembered her responsibility, when very young, of escorting her two next younger brothers to their school.
Clarke, Mary Cowden. My Long Life. Dodd, Mead.
10
Unlike them, she began her education at home. She writes fondly about the rich array of...
Education
Elizabeth Gaskell
Until the age of eleven, Elizabeth was taught at home by her Aunt Hannah Lumb
. As befitting the Unitarian emphasis on personal freedom and rationality, she read widely, and was encouraged to make her...
Education
Charlotte Yonge
The young CY
seems to have been totally unlike her adult self: a noisy, excitable child with a great capacity for screaming.
Battiscombe, Georgina, and E. M. Delafield. Charlotte Mary Yonge: The Story of an Uneventful Life. Constable and Company.
43
Her parents followed the system of Richard
and Maria Edgeworth
for bringing...
Beatrix, educated at home and six years older than her brother, was a solitary child. She had few toys; but she became deeply interested in science, and was also, from an early age, devoted to...
