Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Harriet Beecher Stowe
-
Standard Name: Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Birth Name: Harriet Elizabeth Beecher
Married Name: Harriet Elizabeth Stowe
HBS
is best known for the highly sentimental and influential anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, although she also authored several other novels, short stories, children's stories, pamphlets, a good deal of journalism, and a biography of Lady Byron
(mother of the mathematician and scientist Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace
). Much of her journalism was evangelical in tone. HBS
's reputation peaked with Uncle Tom's Cabin, after which her cultural standing declined.
Her first thought was to have Harriet Beecher Stowe
approached to tell it, but all Stowe could envisage was using some facts about HJ
(after checking them with white witnesses) in her A Key to...
Textual Production
Mary Russell Mitford
She dedicated this work to Henry Chorley
, without whose persuasion, she said, she would not have written it.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Recollections of a Literary Life; or, Books, Places and People. R. Bentley, 1852, 3 vols.
prelims
French and American editions soon followed.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research, 1992.
FT
drew on her American experiences to produce the anti-slaverynovelThe Life and Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, fifteen years before Stowe
's Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2024, 22 vols. plus supplements.
Ellis, Linda Abess. Frances Trollope’s America. Peter Lang, 1993.
139
Textual Production
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
By 1832 she had read Mme de Staël
's novel of the romantic female artist, Corinne, three times and claimed the immortal book ought to be reread annually.
Browning, Robert, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The Brownings’ Correspondence. Editors Kelley, Philip et al., Wedgestone Press, 1984–2024, 14 vols. to date.
The British edition appeared in May, and the American edition in June.
Clinton, Catherine. Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars. Simon and Schuster, 2000.
178-9
FK
related the stories of slave women, and asked in conclusion: Can you conceive a more wretched picture than that which it...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Janet Hamilton
Hamilton's poetry, which is frequently didactic or moralistic, comments on British wars (including the Crimean), trade, slavery (she praises Harriet Beecher Stowe
more than once), and revolution. Taking a generally Chartist line she attacks...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Camilla Crosland
Since she was well-connected in London literary circles, she was able to include in her memoir recollections of time spent working with the annuals and of literary figures such as Grace Aguilar
, Lady Blessington
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
George Orwell
This is one of the several pieces in which Orwell champions the middlebrow or non-art writing. His supreme example
Orwell, George. The Penguin Essays of George Orwell. Penguin in association with Secker and Warburg, 1984.
326
of the kind of book that has no literary pretensions but which remains readable when...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sarah Josepha Hale
In keeping with her dedication, SJH
represents women writers as inhabiting very much a man's world. Her entry on Margaret Fuller
, for instance, goes into detail on Fuller's father but does not mention her...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Monica Furlong
Writing of Bunyan's near-universal appeal, MR cites the many remarkable men
Furlong, Monica. Puritan’s Progress, A Study of John Bunyan. Hodder and Stoughton, 1975.
13
who have been interested in him: she moves on to the use of his imagery by Charlotte Brontë
, Harriet Beecher Stowe
...
Violence
Bessie Rayner Parkes
Not only had the occupying troops burned the furniture and staircases, defaced the pictures or shot them full of holes: out of the dungheaps covering the gardens were retrieved letters or scraps of letters from...
