Frances Sheridan

01 January 1724 - 26 August 1766

Standard Name: Sheridan, Frances

Birth Name: Frances Chamberlaine

Married Name: Frances Sheridan

Pseudonym: The Editor of Sidney Bidulph

Pseudonym: The Author of the Discovery

Pseudonym: The Late Editor of the Former Part

FS was a novelist and dramatist whose adult writing career was cut short after less than seven years. She was a leading practitioner of the eighteenth-century sentimental novel. She also wrote poetry.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort ascending	Author name	Excerpt
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Anne Katharine Elwood	Some of the British women writers discussed in the text remain well-known, but others have slipped into obscurity. Memoirs includes: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu , Griselda Murray , Frances Seymour, Lady Hertford , Hester Lynch Piozzi
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Mary Seymour Montague	The third epistle performs the conventional act of praising historical women: the monarchs Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great of Russia for their exercise of power, the French scholar Anne Dacier , and eleven British...
Textual Production	Hannah Cowley	According to the memoir published here, HC wrote rapidly, revising nothing and often not saving short poems at all. Most of her smaller poems were written without rising from the chair in which the thought...
Textual Production	Sue Townsend	ST wrote an introduction for Frances Sheridan 's novel Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, 1761, in the ground-breaking Pandora edition, 1987.
Textual Production	Charlotte Brooke	Some years before her death CB wrote her tragedy Belisarius on a story popularised by Marmontel in his Bélisaire, 1767 (which had first reached English in the same year as its French publication). Charles Kemble
Textual Features	Eliza Parsons	Money issues arise early in this story. Mr Mead was curate to a small parish in Lincolnshire, and performed the whole duty within eight miles round, for the noble salary of thirty-five pounds a...
Textual Features	Maria Susanna Cooper	The protagonist, Mrs Villars, is introduced in letters from Lady Egerton, who was very ill at Bath when Mrs Villars saved her life, and is now staying at her benefactress's house in Essex. Lady...
Textual Features	Maria Edgeworth	This essay includes elements of fiction and reportage. It both exemplifies and defends the colourful and linguistically distinct qualities of Irish lower-class speech, pointing out that for these speakers English is their second language. (This...
Textual Features	Charlotte Smith	The heroine is a mysterious young widow embittered by her experience of a corrupt guardian and a dissipated husband who betrayed and deserted her. The play mocks literary generic conventions, including those that were CS
Textual Features	Phebe Gibbes	The heroine, who is initially called Ella, is represented as needing to read novels in order to learn about social skills, duties, and distinctions as depicted by a Brooks [sic], a Sheridan , a Burney
Textual Features	Eliza Kirkham Mathews	In Anecdotes of the Clairville Family three orphan children are educated by a wise maiden aunt, while Emily Wilmont, aged seven, progresses from deception to thieving to death from despair. The book incorporates an Ode...
Occupation	Ann Thicknesse	Lord Jersey attempted to sabotage the first concert before it happened by encouraging a family member to hold a competing event on the same day. Thicknesse, Ann. A Letter from Miss F—d. 29 AT 's father then tried to stop the concert...
Occupation	David Garrick	This began his career as theatre manager. One of a manager's duties might be considered to be the putting on of new plays, to ensure the health of the theatre of the future, but familiar...
Occupation	William Godwin	The imprint M. J. Godwin and Company was launched the following year. The business flourished, becoming almost a literary salon like that of Joseph Johnson : visitors included Germaine de Staël . It remained, however...
Literary responses	Charlotte Lennox	This time Lennox had at least a moderate stage success, bringing her a welcome author's benefit night. The London Stage 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press. 4: 1928ff She became the first successful female novelist of her generation to break into theatre, as Frances Sheridan

Timeline

1780

James Harrison (hitherto chiefly known as a music publisher) began to issue the handsomely-produced Novelists' Magazine, a weekly serial reprinting of canonical novels.

1814

John Colin Dunlop published The History of Fiction: Being a Critical Account of the Most Celebrated Prose Works of Fiction, from the Earliest Greek Romances to the Novels of the Present Age.

Texts

Sheridan, Frances. Conclusion of the Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph. J. Dodsley, 1767.

Sheridan, Frances. Eugenia and Adelaide. C. Dilly, 1791.

Sheridan, Frances. “Introduction”. The Plays of Frances Sheridan, edited by Richard Hogan and Jerry C. Beasley, University of Delaware Press, 1984, pp. 13-35.

Townsend, Sue, and Frances Sheridan. “Introduction”. Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, Pandora Press, 1987, p. ix - xi.

Sheridan, Frances. “Introduction”. Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, edited by Jean Coates Cleary et al., World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, 1995.

Sheridan, Frances. Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph. R. and J. Dodsley, 1761.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, and Frances Sheridan. Sheridan’s Plays, now printed as he wrote them, and his mother’s unpublished comedy, A Journey to Bath. Editor Rae, W. Fraser, D. Nutt, 1902.

Sheridan, Frances. The Discovery. T. Davies, 1763.

Sheridan, Frances. The Dupe. A. Millar, 1764.

Sheridan, Frances. The History of Nourjahad. J. Dodsley, 1767.

Sheridan, Frances. The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph. Editors Hutner, Heidi and Nicole Garret, Broadview Press, 2011.

Sheridan, Frances. The Plays of Frances Sheridan. Editors Hogan, Robert and Jerry C. Beasley, University of Delaware Press, 1984.