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.
In her first essay, Lee offers a summary analysis of the English novelistic tradition. Judging them especially, though not entirely, on their treatments of morality, she evaluates writers including Jane Austen
, Maria Edgeworth
,...
Intertextuality and Influence
Jane Loudon
The two stories appear to be based on fact, since Agnes Merton's father is a horticulturalist on a jaunt into the country to inspect rare plants. The first story contrasts the prudent and the rash...
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
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...
Textual Production
Jane Marcet
A three-volume anonymous work appeared from John Murray
, Bertha's Visit to her Uncle in England: it is often attributed to JM
, but is in fact by Harriet Beaufort
, whose sister was...
Marcet, Jane. “Introduction”. Chemistry in the Schoolroom: 1806, edited by Hazel Rossotti, AuthorHouse, p. i - xxi.
iii, v n6
Literary responses
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
It was likened in the Athenæum's laudatory review to Maria Edgeworth
's anti-romantic novel Leonora, 1806, because of its similar scope and tendency and the artistic manner in which its subject was portrayed...
Textual Features
Harriet Martineau
The stories are eventful as well as didactic (incidents range from natural disaster and piracy to child heroism and the death of a baby). They typically feature sudden adversity, which snatches children from a familiar...
Textual Features
Harriet Martineau
Critic Linda H. Peterson
places the Autobiography as a response to the domestic memoir generally and to the domestication of the religious and intellectual in the memoirs of various women including Charlotte Tonna
. Instead...
Friends, Associates
Harriet Martineau
HM
's social circle vastly expanded at this time until she knew virtually all the prominent people, particularly the political men, of her day. As she recorded in her Autobiography, however, she refused to...
Literary responses
Harriet Martineau
The Athenæum gave this almost a full-page review (far more than it had yet accorded any of the Illustrations). It compared HM
's work in detail with that of Sir Walter Scott
and more...
Literary responses
Harriet Martineau
Maria Edgeworth
wrote to HM
to express her admiration of The Hour and the Man, and Florence Nightingale
said after the author's death that she had read it repeatedly and considered it the finest...
She often used this column to address the works of literary women of the past. She judged Jane Austen
inferior to Charlotte Brontë
, accepting Brontë's opinion that Austen lacked what she, by implication, possessed:...
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
,...