Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
-
Standard Name: Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité de
Birth Name: Caroline Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest
Married Name: Caroline Stéphanie Félicité de Genlis
Titled: Caroline Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis
Used Form: Stephanie-Felicite de Genlis
Used Form: Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis, Countess of Genlis and Marchioness
of Sillery
SFG
, French aristocrat, royal mistress, and later a political refugee in England, made her mark as an educational theorist and writer for children (plays, stories, and good advice) during the decade leading up to the French Revolution. She also published adult novels, romances, and an autobiography. In England at least it was her writing for children that was admired and influential.
"Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Madame_de_Genlis_1780.jpg/847px-Madame_de_Genlis_1780.jpg.
There is an unexplained gap in her reviewing between August 1791 and January 1800. Four of her reviews were co-authored: with Ralph Griffiths
, his son George
, or her husband
.
Waters, Mary A. British Women Writers and the Profession of Literary Criticism, 1789-1832. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
141 and n32, 143
Textual Production
Amelia Opie
At about the same date she published several Recollections of an Authoress in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. Each of these dealt with a particular author she had known, including Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
and Sir Walter Scott
.
Opie, Amelia. “Introduction”. The Collected Poems of Amelia Alderson Opie, edited by Shelley King and John B. Pierce, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. xxxvii - lxx.
lv
Textual Production
Ann Hatton
AH
continued to write after she and her husband returned from North America. The ODNB mentions her anonymous story The Unknown, or, The Knight of the Blood-Red Plume in a collection called Welsh Legends...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Inchbald
Most of EI
's plays employ common sentimental comedic plots of marriage choice and sexual intrigue. Set in England and various other countries, they often open with the reappearance of some character from overseas: in...
Textual Production
Maria Edgeworth
ME
worked on a translation of Adèle et Théodore: ou lettres sur l'education by Madame de Genlis
.
Butler, Marilyn. Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography. Clarendon, 1972.
91, 147-9
Butler, Marilyn. “Edgeworth’s Stern Father: Escaping Thomas Day, 1795-1801”. Tradition in Transition: Women Writers, Marginal Texts, and the Eighteenth-Century Canon, edited by Alvaro Ribeiro and James G. Basker, Clarendon, 1996, pp. 75-93.
76
Textual Production
Mariana Starke
A version of children's plays by Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
, The Theatre of Education. A New Translation from the French, appears to be the anonymous work of MS
and the little-known Millecent Thomas
(formerly Parkhurst).
Dow, Gillian. “The British Reception of Madame de Genlis’s Writings for Children: Plays and Tales of Instruction and Delight”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
29
, No. 3, 2006, pp. 367-81.
369
Pitcher, Edward W. “Mariana Starke and Millecent Thomas: Early Translators of Genliss Le théâtre à lusage des jeunes personnes (1779-1780)Notes and Queries, Vol.
45 (243)
, No. 1, Mar. 1988, pp. 81-2.
81-2
Textual Production
Elizabeth Inchbald
The source was Zélie; ou, L'Ingénue by Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
. The adaptation was published on 12 December.
Textual Production
Mariana Starke
It seems that she had begun to learn stagecraft in translating from Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
. The comedy was anonymously published in the year of its performance; a Dublin and another London edition quickly followed...
Textual Production
Catherine Fanshawe
The letters that CF
sent to Anne Grant
are not extant, but Grant's side of the correspondence leaves no doubt that the two were in constant dialogue about new books they had read, and their...
Textual Production
Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck
Its fuller title is Asaph; or The Herrnhutters; being a rhythmical sketch of the principle events, and most remarkable institutions in the modern history of the Church of the Unitas Fratrum, commonly called Moravians;...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sarah Green
M. G. Lewis
is a more complicated case, treated with some nuance. SG
admires The Monk but feels that after that Lewis's real talent was obscured by the baneful influence of German fiction: she agrees...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sydney Owenson Lady Morgan
Morgan describes chiefly Paris and its society, ostensibly on the model of Germaine de Staël
's L'Allemagne. She does indeed include French culture centrally among her topics: she criticises the works of Corneille
and...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Melesina Trench
About the first twenty pages are occupied by MT
's early reminiscences, probably written not long after her first husband's death: she frankly recorded her emotional disturbance over that event.
Trench, Melesina. The Remains of the Late Mrs. Richard Trench. Editor Trench, Richard Chenevix, Second edition, revised, Parker and Bourn, 1862.
18
Later pages mix letters...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins
Her protagonist, Theresa Morven, has until three years before the story opens been buried in a French convent at the behest of her stepmother, whom, however, she steadfastly refuses to hate. (Her own mother died...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Elizabeth Margravine of Anspach
EMA
goes into some detail about the French court and royal family from the time that she lived at Versailles, pausing too to do justice to the talents of Madame Genlis, if only in...
