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 has been until recently a given of literary history that William Beckford
had his half-sister in his sights in his two burlesques on women's novel-writing. The title-page of the first quotes Pope
, thus...
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Anna Maria Mackenzie
AMM
's opening address To the Readers of Modern Romance says that ancient romance was put paid to by the new source of amusement . . . struck out by Henry Fielding
and Richardson
(to...
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Virginia Woolf
She writes more directly of money, of the riches lavished through the ages on masculine institutions like the ancient universities, but here too her clinching example is one of the imagination: her contrast of the...
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May Crommelin
The story opens as Irene Ronaldson receives the news that she has inherited a fortune of twenty thousand pounds a year.
“May Crommelin (Maria Henriette de la Cherois-Crommelin) (1849 - 1930)”. Crommelin Family, The Netherlands.
Irene is an orphan: her father lost everything in a bank crash, went out...
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Mary Julia Young
MJY
foregrounds her own friendship with Anna Maria Crouch, and finds room for such details as the opinions of Crouch's father, Peregrine Phillips
, about novelists: he admired Charlotte Smith
, Anna Maria Bennett
,...
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Lady Anne Barnard
In a striking parallel with the young Frances Burney
, she makes her writing her confidante: in thy Breast can secrets rest, / Thy chattering tongue will neer reveal, / What we require thee to...
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Catherine Hutton
This character, which novelistic convention would make a peripheral caricature (though his vigorous writing style has no oddity like, for instance, that of Frances Burney
's Mr Briggs), becomes incorporated, without reforming in character, into...
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Frances Jacson
The title-page quotes from Milton
's Samson Agonistes. An address To the Dethroned Sovereign Truth hopes for the restoration of this power which, says the author, is still present although obsolete and obscure. Her...
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Mary Carleton
The Case presents itself as a rendering of the truth for God to read, if nobody else. It depicts MC
according to several different fictional conventions. In youth she resembles the heroines of the Restoration...
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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...
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Jane Austen
The plot of this novel is a version of a romance archetype: poor but deserving girl confounds all expectations by marrying up. Elizabeth Bennet is the quintessence of the witty and resourceful heroine who had...
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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
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Eliza Haywood
True to her name, EH
's heroine snubs Mr Trueworth because she really can't be bothered with him. She is already sorry before (ignoring ominous nightmares) she marries the egregious Mr Munden. He not only...
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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...
