Jane Barker

-
Standard Name: Barker, Jane
Birth Name: Jane Barker
Pseudonym: Fidelia
Pseudonym: A Young Lady
Pseudonym: Galesia
JB , who wrote during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, shows remarkable daring and originality both as a poet and as a writer of prose fiction. Critical attention to her as a proto-feminist has recently been joined by attention to the political (Catholic and Jacobite) slant of her writings. From her debut as a coterie writer circulating her poems among a group of admiring male friends, JB became a denizen of the literary marketplace and a voice both for the silent elements in women's experience and for the silenced Catholic and Jacobite elements in national life.
Alleged portrait of Jane Barker: a fleuron in "The Entertaining Novels of Mrs. Jane Barker of Wilsthorp in Northamptonshire", published by Edmund Curll, third (posthumous) edition, 1736. In an oval frame, "Barker" faces the viewer in a low-necked, lace-edged gown, with hair in curls on her head and down her neck.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Lady Lucy Herbert
LLH met the novelist Jane Barker before she became a nun, and after entering the convent she became acquainted with the autobiographer Catherine Holland .
Latz, Dorothy L., editor. “Neglected Writings by Recusant Women”. Neglected English Literature: Recusant Writings of the 16th-17th Centuries, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1997.
38
She was visited at her convent late in life...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Astell
MA influenced a whole generation of writing women: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu , Mary Chudleigh , Elizabeth Thomas , Judith Drake , Damaris Masham (although Masham's opinions were markedly different), Elizabeth Elstob , and Jane Barker
Intertextuality and Influence Aphra Behn
Aspects of this story were re-used by Jane Barker (for Philinda's Story out of the Book in The Lining of the Patch-Work Screen, 1725) and by Thomas Southerne and David Garrick for works for...
Intertextuality and Influence Aphra Behn
Behn's death, this elegy says, is a disaster for women's writing, for no other woman dares her Laurel wear.
qtd. in
Mendelson, Sara Heller. The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies. Harvester Press, 1987.
182
For a while it remained possible for women writers like Jane Barker to claim descent...
Literary responses Katherine Philips
Soon after KP 's death Sir William Temple published an elegy on her, made at the Desire of My Lady Temple
qtd. in
Roberts, William, scholar. “Sir William Temple on Orinda: Neglected Publications”. Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Vol.
57
, 1963, pp. 328-36.
332-3
—his wife, the former Dorothy Osborne . The progress of her reputation was...
Occupation Edmund Curll
Curll was apprenticed sometime around 1697 to 1699, and set up in business for himself by early 1706.
Baines, Paul, and Pat Rogers. Edmund Curll, Bookseller. Clarendon Press, 2007.
12, 22
He became a particularly agile entrepreneur with a nose for new market niches and an...
politics Lady Lucy Herbert
LLH , like her parents, was a Jacobite and an activist in the cause. She looked on James Edward Stuart as James III, rightful king of England and Scotland, and must have been delighted when...
Author summary Fidelia
This symbolic name indicating faithfulness (which was also adopted for themselves by Mary Astell , Jane Barker , and the American writers Sarah Gill , Hannah Griffitts and Sukey Vickery , as well as for...
Residence Anne Finch
AF and her husband lost their home in Westminster Palace at James's exile. They did not accompany him into exile, like Lady Nithsdale or Jane Barker ; instead, they took shelter with various friends and connections.
McGovern, Barbara. Anne Finch and Her Poetry: A Critical Biography. University of Georgia Press, 1992.
55-7
Textual Features Harriet Beecher Stowe
The book opens on the question how to relate a narrative. HBS uses the metaphor of the patchwork quilt, which goes back at least as far as Jane Barker in the 1720s. The story features...
Textual Features 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...
Textual Production Jane Collier
This single-page allegory in JC 's commonplace-book figures her literary collaboration with Sarah Fielding as a shared project in dress-making.
Collier, Jane et al. Common Place Book. 1748–1755.
78
Londry, Michael. “Our dear Miss Jenny Collier”. Times Literary Supplement, 5 Mar. 2004, pp. 13-14.
13
Their method of needlework gives a pleasing new turn to the patchwork trope...
Textual Production Judith Drake
The lengthy title lists the satirical sketches that the work contains.
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.
The attribution to JD by name comes from a catalogue published by Edmund Curll in 1741 (which mentions James Drake as arranging the publication...

Timeline

1656: Abraham Cowley published Poems; this volume,...

Writing climate item

1656

Abraham Cowley published Poems; this volume, which included his Pindaric Odes and Miscellanies, confirmed his stature as the leading poet of the day.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.

Texts

Barker, Jane. A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies. E. Curll and T. Payne, 1723.
Barker, Jane. Exilius, or the Banish’d Roman. E. Curll, 1715.
Wilson, Carol Shiner, and Jane Barker. “Introduction”. The Galesia Trilogy and Selected Manuscript Poems of Jane Barker, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. xv - xliv.
Barker, Jane. Love Intrigues, or The History of . . . Bosvil and Galesia. E. Curll, 1713.
Barker, Jane. Poetical Recreations. Benjamin Crayle, 1687.
Fénelon, François-de-Salignac-de-la-Mothe. The Christian Pilgrimage. Translator Barker, Jane, E. Curll and C. Rivington, 1718.
Barker, Jane. The Entertaining Novels of Mrs Jane Barker. A. Bettesworth and E. Curll, 1719.
Barker, Jane. The Galesia Trilogy and Selected Manuscript Poems of Jane Barker. Editor Wilson, Carol Shiner, Oxford University Press, 1997.
Barker, Jane. The Lining of the Patch-Work Screen. A. Bettesworth, 1726.
Barker, Jane. The Poems of Jane Barker: The Magdalen Manuscript. Editor King, Kathryn R., Magdalen College, 1998.