Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Frances Hodgson Burnett
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Standard Name: Burnett, Frances Hodgson
Birth Name: Frances Eliza Hodgson
Indexed Name: F. Hodgson
Pseudonym: The Second
Pseudonym: Fannie E. Hodgson
Married Name: Frances Eliza Burnett
Indexed Name: Mrs Fanny Hodgson Burnett
Nickname: Dearest
Nickname: Fluffy
Used Form: F. H. Burnett
Writing during the latter half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, equally at home with both Britain and the USA, with their respective book trades and publishing practices, FHB
began with magazine serials, then industrial novels, romance novels, and historical novels. She is best-remembered for her children's books, between which and her adult fiction the line is blurred rather than distinct. Both a highly professional and a popular writer, she is a remarkably astute commentator on the national characteristics of England and the United States. Her character-drawing (snobs, faithful servants, unspoilt children) is just stereotypical enough for instant appeal, while retaining a surprising capacity for original insight.
Irish Leaders and Martyrs, an interesting study in intellectual leadership, touches on the power of writing such as ballads, but does not discuss any women. American Women is an insightful study of historical and...
Ewing, Juliana Horatia et al. Victorian Tales for Girls. Editor Laski, Marghanita, Pilot Press.
prelims
Education
Hilary Mantel
HM
later wrote of her earliest memory. Her early world, she said, was synaesthesic.
Mantel, Hilary. “Giving up the Ghost: A Memoir”. London Review of Books, pp. 8-13.
8
Mantel, Hilary. Giving up the Ghost. Fourth Estate.
23
As a child she was constantly reading and always enacting some fictional role. Anyone who hesitates near me...
Textual Production
Deborah Moggach
DM
has written a number of TV screenplays, both from her own prose and that of others, and in the form of original scripts, from which several of her novels were expanded. She has adapted...
Textual Production
E. Nesbit
Here a new family of children (whose names all begin with C) join forces with several characters from EN
's earlier books. The walled garden of the title suggests Frances Hodgson Burnett
's The Secret...
Textual Production
Charlotte Riddell
Furniss quoted with relish her allegedly low opinion of Ellen Wood
, as simply a brute, she throws in bits of religion to slip her fodder down the public throat.
Ellis, Stewart Marsh. Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu, and Others. Books for Libraries Press.
Her education began with her mother and a governess. At six she began attending a class run by the sister of another Rugby master. Later came visits to a piano teacher, and at home a...
Literary responses
Evelyn Sharp
Beverly Lyon Clark
, who wrote an introduction to this book and thought extremely highly of it, argued that the neglect of it stemmed from its belonging not just to one but to several under-appreciated...
Occupation
Constance Smedley
This building (just vacated by the Imperial Service Club
was later exchanged for an even more spacious one at 138 Piccadilly. The London press in general warmly backed the new venture.
Smedley, Constance, and Maxwell Armfield. Crusaders. Chatto & Windus.
NS
stuck with the realistic side of Ballet Shoes when she mined the same seam again in her second children's book, Tennis Shoes, 1937 (in which difficult, obstreperous Nicky Heath wins her success partly...
Intertextuality and Influence
Noel Streatfeild
Here an English family, the Winters, go on holiday to California, and Jane Winter is picked to play the role of Mary Lennox in a film of Frances Hodgson Burnett
's The Secret Garden...
Publishing
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
During her early years Ella Wheeler also wrote crude and uninspired prose tales for the lesser magazines and weeklies such as Peterson's Magazine.
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler. The Worlds and I. Gay and Hancock.
77
She was elated when one of them appeared alongside something...
