Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Margaret Holford
-
Standard Name: Holford, Margaret,, the younger
Birth Name: Margaret Holford
Married Name: Margaret Hodson
Used Form: Mrs Hodson
Indexed Name: M. Holford
The first published work of Margaret Holford (whose mother was a writer bearing the same name) was an extended oriental tale in prose, which has often been ascribed to the mother instead of the daughter. The younger Margaret (who continued writing under her married name of Hodson) is best remembered as a poet (she won rather short-lived fame with the romantic narrative poem Wallace). She also published a novel, some translations, and religious writings only recently identified, and wrote a tragedy which remained unacted and unprinted. Long after her fame had ebbed, she persisted in efforts to make a literary comeback.
Joanna Baillie
told Margaret Hodson (formerly Holford)
that HMB
, who was devotedly nursed by a friend, was kept ignorant by her doctors of what disease she had (oddly, since she knew she had not...
Family and Intimate relationships
Margaret Holford
Their eldest daughter, another Margaret Holford
, became well known as a poet. Another daughter married Joshua Walker, a London banker. The youngest remained unmarried.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999, 2 vols.
2: 540n5
Friends, Associates
Joanna Baillie
She met Wordsworth
and Southey
in the Lake District in 1808, and was corresponding with Wordsworth by 1812.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999, 2 vols.
1: 240
Carhart, Margaret S. The Life and Work of Joanna Baillie. Reprint of 1923, Archon Books, 1970.
23
He named her his ideal English [sic] gentlewoman.
Carhart, Margaret S. The Life and Work of Joanna Baillie. Reprint of 1923, Archon Books, 1970.
57
It was about the same...
Friends, Associates
Sarah Harriet Burney
SHB
's friendships were complicated by her prickliness about her lack of means and status, and her talent for satire. In general she preferred the company of men to women, since she was often thrown...
Friends, Associates
Catherine Fanshawe
CF
's friends included other highly literate middle-class women such as Mary Berry
and Anne Grant
in Edinburgh. (Her friendship with Grant was maintained entirely by correspondence—she and her sisters hoped to visit Edinburgh in...
Friends, Associates
Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck
She knew other distinguished writers from the previous generation too, and her friends both before and after her marriage included many in the world of literature. A couple of years after this she spent the...
Literary responses
Susan Ferrier
Again SF
met with success on balance. The Athenæum, however, naming Miss Ferriar as author, stated that the success of Marriage, backed by the good-natured commendation of Sir Walter Scott
, induced the...
Literary responses
Margaret Gatty
Margaret (Holford) Hodson
admired her early poetry.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Textual Features
Joanna Baillie
JB
said she admired her heroine Lady Grisell
(whose story she wrote in a few weeks during the winter of 1816-17) beyond any Female Character I ever knew or read of.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999, 2 vols.
1: 168
She acknowledged...
Textual Features
Jane Porter
JP
's original introduction (to which she later added further memories of colourful Scots characters from her childhood in Edinburgh) mentions exhaustive consultation of historians, and makes no direct allusion to the verse romance...
Textual Features
Amelia Opie
This collected commemorative poems (a genre much practised by AO
) from earlier years, including at least one formerly printed in an annual.
Burmester, James et al. English Books. James Burmester Rare Books, 1985–2024, Numbered catalogues.
MRM
's letters regularly indulge in analysis of books. She comments on works by both men and women, in English and French, and her opinions shift a good deal with age. She reacted with horror...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Ham
It was dedicated to the poet Margaret Holford Hodson
(who was at this time seriously ill), and was apparently published by August.
Baillie, Joanna. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. Editor Slagle, Judith Bailey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999, 2 vols.
1: 203
Joanna Baillie's editor Judith Bailey Slagle
dates Baillie's letter about this...
Textual Production
Margaret Holford
If, as seems likely, it was Holford's eldest daughter (Margaret Holford later Hodson)
who wrote Calaf, a Persian Tale, first published in the earlier part of 1798, then it was probably her mother
who...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Elizabeth Isabella Spence
The title-page quotes Burns
and Scott
. The preface remarks that books based on female impressions of national manners and moral character have succeeded in the past.
Spence, Elizabeth Isabella. Sketches of the Present Manners, Customs, and Scenery of Scotland. 2nd ed., Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1811, 2 vols.
prelims iv
The book is again made up...
Timeline
22 July 1298: The English-Welsh army of Edward I, having...
National or international item
22 July 1298
The English-Welsh army of Edward I
, having been lured dangerously deep into an already devastated Scottish countryside offering no sustenance, attacked the Scots under William Wallace
at Falkirk.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Wallace
Texts
Holford, Margaret, the younger. Calaf, a Persian Tale. Hookham and Carpenter, 1798, 2 vols.
Holford, Margaret, the younger. Calaf, a Persian Tale. Minerva Press, William Lane, 1800, 2 vols.
Holford, Margaret, the younger. Death-bed Thoughts. Hatchard, 1838.
Holford, Margaret, the younger. Elegiac Ode to the Memory of Lieut.-Colonel Vassall. 1808.
Italian Stories. Translator Holford, Margaret, the younger, J. Andrews, 1823.
Holford, Margaret, the younger. letter to Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck. 1814.
Quintana, Manuel José. Lives of Vasco Nunez de Balboa and Francisco Pizarro. Translator Holford, Margaret, the younger, Blackwood, 1832.
Holford, Margaret, the younger. Margaret of Anjou. John Murray, 1816.
Holford, Margaret, the younger. Poems. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1811.
Holford, Margaret, the younger. The Past, etc. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1819.
Holford, Margaret, the younger. Wallace. Cadell and Davies, 1809.
Holford, Margaret, the younger. Warbeck of Wolfstein. Rodwell and Martin, 1820, 3 vols.
