Priscilla Wakefield

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Standard Name: Wakefield, Priscilla
Birth Name: Priscilla Bell
Married Name: Priscilla Wakefield
PW 's sixteen titles, begun at a time when she was past forty and spanning the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, were all published with the aim of improving the state of the world as well as making some income that was much needed by her family. She wrote, chiefly for young people, of scientific knowledge, of other countries, and of history, casting her works in dialogues, letters, or narrative. She also examined the condition of women.
Stipple engraving of Priscilla Wakefield by James Thompson after Thomas Charles Wageman, published 1818. She sits with her hands clasped in her lap, wearing a dress, shawl, and an elaborate cap which encircles her face, leaving a few dark curls visible. Her name is written in italics below.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Mary Louisa Molesworth
Educated privately at home, MLM could not remember a time before she could read, nor any time when reading stories was not my greatest delight.
Green, Roger Lancelyn. Mrs. Molesworth. Bodley Head, 1961.
21
She began formal learning with her mother. She read...
Education Mary Cowden Clarke
MCC later remembered her responsibility, when very young, of escorting her two next younger brothers to their school.
Clarke, Mary Cowden. My Long Life. Dodd, Mead, 1896.
10
Unlike them, she began her education at home. She writes fondly about the rich array of...
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck
Springing from a distinguished Quaker family, MAS had a large circle of cousins who made a name for themselves in one way or another. Her cousins included the writer Priscilla Wakefield , and the sisters...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Hays
In this work MH takes a position generally compatible with that of the Dissenters. She was spurred to write by the need to answer Wakefield 's Enquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Public or...
Intertextuality and Influence Jane Loudon
The same year, 1840, JL issued another book for children: The Young Naturalist's Journey: or the Travels of Agnes Merton with her Mama, a hybrid of entertainment and pedagogy in the style of Charlotte Smith
Intertextuality and Influence Susanna Watts
The fuller title was A Walk through Leicester, being a guide . . . containing a description of the town and its environs, with remarks upon it's [sic] history and antiquities. It was printed...
Intertextuality and Influence Anna Letitia Barbauld
Taken together, ALB 's various writings for children during her career as educator at Palgrave School exerted enormous influence on other children's writers, such as Maria Edgeworth , Sarah Trimmer , Hannah More , and...
Literary responses Amelia B. Edwards
Henry Fothergill Chorley in the Athenæum faulted the book as being something close to a textbook under the guise of entertainment. Young people, he argued, resent such books as engines of oppression.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
1788 (1862): 151
Textual Features Muriel Jaeger
MJ 's next chapter deals with the male counterparts of the previous chapter's examples (Frederic Lamb , but also Dugald Stewart and Henry Brougham ), setting the Society for the Suppression of Vice against...
Textual Features Sarah Trimmer
In addition to Catharine Cappe 's work on Sunday schools and versions of fairy stories by Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy , the magazine reviewed work by a whole library of didactic, pedagogical, or improving writers, reprinted as...
Textual Features Susanna Watts
The many pictures in the volume include diagrams of the hold of a slave ship, I & Dash my Dog (a sketch), and prints of Hester Mulso Chapone , Lady Rachel Russell (with a copy...
Textual Features Lucy Aikin
This is a work of pedagogy in a form made familiar by Priscilla Wakefield and others, combining history, geography, and adventure, with an overall strong narrative drive.
Paul, Lissa. The Children’s Book Business. Routledge, 2011.
49
Its full title is The Travels of...
Textual Features Lydia Maria Child
Its dialogue form (two children talk with Aunt Maria) followed English models like Jane Marcet and Priscilla Wakefield , but much of its material (about slaves, Indians, local botany) is distinctively American. Historical novels are...

Timeline

12 March to 25 May 1644
In her husband 's absence the royalist Countess of Derby , born a Huguenot Frenchwoman, successfully stood a siege at Lathom House in Lancashire (a towered and moated building).
8 December 1786
The Times (not yet using its final and best-known title) attributed the alleged rise in the number of prostitutes to the male takeover of traditionally female jobs (for example, milliner, dress-maker, stay-maker, and so on).
1805
George Nicholson compiled and published at Poughnill near Ludlow in ShropshireThe Advocate and Friend of Woman, an anthology of excerpts.

Texts

Wakefield, Priscilla. A Family Tour through the British Empire. Darton and Harvey, 1804.
Wakefield, Priscilla. An Introduction to Botany. E. Newberry, Darton and Harvey, and Vernor and Hood, 1796.
Wakefield, Priscilla. An Introduction to the Natural History and Classification of Insects. Darton, Harvey and Darton, 1816.
Wakefield, Priscilla. Domestic Recreation. Darton and Harvey, 1805.
Wakefield, Priscilla. Excursions in North America. Darton and Harvey, 1806.
Wakefield, Priscilla. Instinct Displayed. Darton and Harvey, 1811.
Wakefield, Priscilla. Juvenile Anecdotes. Darton and Harvey, 1798.
Wakefield, Priscilla. Leisure Hours. Darton and Harvey, 1796.
Wakefield, Priscilla. Mental Improvement. Darton and Harvey, 1797.
Wakefield, Priscilla. Reflections on the Present Condition of the Female Sex. J. Johnson, and Darton and Harvey, 1798.
Wakefield, Priscilla. Sketches of Human Manners. Darton and Harvey, 1807.
Wakefield, Priscilla. The Juvenile Travellers. Darton and Harvey, 1801.
Wakefield, Priscilla. The Traveller in Africa. Darton, Harvey and Darton, 1814.
Wakefield, Priscilla. Variety. Darton and Harvey, 1809.