Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Frances Burney
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Standard Name: Burney, Frances
Birth Name: Frances Burney
Nickname: Fanny
Nickname: The Old Lady
Married Name: Frances D'Arblay
Indexed Name: Madame D'Arblay
Pseudonym: A Sister of the Order
Used Form: the author of Evelina
Used Form: the author of Evelina and Cecilia
Used Form: the author of Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla
FB
, renowned as a novelist in her youth and middle age, outlived her high reputation; her fourth and last novel (published in 1814) was her least well received. Her diaries and letters, posthumously published, were greeted with renewed acclaim. During the late twentieth century the re-awakening of interest in her fiction and the rediscovery of her plays revealed her as a woman of letters to be reckoned with. Today her reputation in the academic world stands high, and productions of her plays are no longer isolated events.
It was an act of great courage for MS
to make herself so conspicuous. Cicely Hamilton
and Catherine Gasquoine Hartley
led the procession. Members of the WWSL each carried a goose quill and a bannerette...
Textual Production
Charlotte Smith
It was small but handsome. Thomas Stothard
did two of the illustrations. His design for sonnet 12 (Written on the Sea Shore.—October 1784—the month in which she crossed the Channel with her children...
Textual Features
Charlotte Smith
CS
regularly, however, interspersed in her novels specimens of the poetry on which she prided herself more. Her fiction mixes pathos and satire. She may depict mountains and castles, but draws on her own life...
Intertextuality and Influence
Charlotte Smith
Three women help each other escape male persecution; the distressed heroine gets an ideal husband, Godolphin, who restores the social status which her illegitimate birth had robbed her of. Though the castle where Emmeline grows...
Literary responses
Charlotte Smith
The Critical Review, reviewing this book, called CS
a sister-queen
Fletcher, Loraine. Charlotte Smith: A Critical Biography. Macmillan.
141
of the novel with Frances Burney
. William Enfield
in the Monthly praised it warmly.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
On the strength of this novel the Critical Review hailed CS
as less agitating than Ann Radcliffe
, less diverting than Frances Burney
, but more true to nature than either. In the Monthly...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Isabella Spence
She does get away in the end and acquires several supporters (Lady Barbara Arden, Lord Dorringcourt, and his sister Lady Elinor), while Lord Valville is left to plot revenge with feelings even more diabolic than...
Friends, Associates
Germaine de Staël
One of her associates in her English visit was the future husband
of Frances Burney
. Burney thought her a woman of the first abilities, very much in the style of Mrs Thrale but with...
Family and Intimate relationships
Jan Struther
In autumn 1939, within a month of publishing the book that was to make her famous, JS
first met Adolf Placzek
, or Dolf, a Jewish refugee from Vienna, thirteen years her junior (son...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Strutt
Influence of Frances Burney
's Evelina is perceptible here, and influence of Jane Austen
seems at least a possibility: a family estate is named Maple Grove, as in Emma, and the heroine's marriage to...
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Louisa Stuart
It gave LLS
some trouble as a child that her grandmother was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
: I am sure I heartily hated her name. Whatever I wanted to learn, everybody was up in arms...
Textual Features
Lady Louisa Stuart
LLS
's letters to Scott
show her to have been a trusted and perceptive critic of his novels, which she often read before publication. On The Heart of Mid-Lothian she sent him a major critique...
Textual Production
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
The novel appeared in Dublin, before the London edition of the same year. Owenson dated her preface 2 November 1802. Her payment was said to consist of four free copies.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
2: 176
Campbell, Mary. Lady Morgan: The Life and Times of Sydney Owenson. Pandora.
47
A...
Textual Features
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
In setting this novel in remote Donegal, Morgan continued her project of explaining her native land to her English readership. Her Irish hero, Roderick O'Donnel, is that almost unbelievable thing, an Irish gentleman who...
