Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Jane Welsh Carlyle
-
Standard Name: Carlyle, Jane Welsh
Birth Name: Jane Baillie Welsh
Married Name: Jane Baillie Carlyle
Used Form: Jane Welsh
JWC
is well known for her prodigious letters, none of which were published during her lifetime.
Christianson, Aileen. “Jane Welsh Carlyle’s Private Writing Career”. A History of Scottish Women’s Writing, edited by Douglas Gifford and Dorothy McMillan, Edinburgh University Press, 1997, pp. 232-45.
232
Her witty epistles, which Thomas Carlyle praised for pick[ing] up every diamond-spark, out of the common floor-dust,
qtd. in
Carlyle, Thomas, and Jane Welsh Carlyle. “Introduction”. The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, edited by Charles Richard Sanders, Duke University Press, 1970.
1: x
are rooted in her domestic and social activities and as a collection provide a social history of nineteenth-century London.
Bloom, Abigail Burnham, editor. Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers. Greenwood Press, 2000.
105
Jane also wrote a personal journal, a few poems, short stories, and dialogues which have been posthumously published. With the rise of feminist and epistolary criticism, JWC
's work has been the subject of increased critical attention from the late twentieth century onwards.
The couple were also good friends with Thomas
and Jane Carlyle
. SA
helped the Carlyles with their house-hunting in London,
Tarr, Rodger L. “’Let us burn our ships’: Carlyle, Sarah Austin, and House-Hunting in London”. Studies in Scottish Literature, edited by G. Ross Roy, University of South Carolina Press, 1987, pp. 91-94.
91
and introduced Thomas Carlyle to John Stuart Mill
. Other friends included...
Friends, Associates
Geraldine Jewsbury
While in ParisGJ
was once again introduced to Ralph Waldo Emerson
, whom she had previously met after attending his November 1847 lecture in Manchester. GJ
grew to like the man she had...
Friends, Associates
Clara Balfour
CB
met and became a friend of Jane Welsh Carlyle
.
The ODNB says they met through Jane Carlyle's gratitude to CB
for writing an anti-socialist tract. The FC says they became friends while Balfour...
Friends, Associates
Ralph Waldo Emerson
As a result of his lecture tours, he became one of the most prominent American intellectuals in Britain, and was personally connected to numerous writers including Jane Carlyle
and Mary Howitt
.
GJ
entered the social scene of the capital with several connections already made. Her London friends included members of the Kingsley and Rossetti families, feminist reformer Frances Power Cobbe
, author John Ruskin
, Samuel Carter
EG
was glad to escape the storm of controversy that her novel had raised in Manchester, and to be feted in London. She already knew Mary Howitt and Geraldine Jewsbury
(who lived in Manchester). Although...
Johnston, Judith. Anna Jameson: Victorian, Feminist, Woman of Letters. Scolar Press, 1997.
3
Friends, Associates
Rosina Bulwer Lytton Baroness Lytton
But though she lived remote from London, she corresponded with writers such as L. E. L.
and Jane Welsh Carlyle
.
Devey, Louisa. Life of Rosina, Lady Lytton. Second, Swan Sonnenschein, Lowery, 1887, http://U. of Toronto.
143
Blain, Virginia. “Rosina Bulwer Lytton and the Rage of the Unheard”. The Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol.
53
, No. 3, 1 June 1990– 2024, pp. 210-36.
232-3
Her women friends stood by her during her husband's various persecutions.
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Gaskell
In May 1849 EG
attended a lavish dinner given by Charles Dickens
to celebrate the publication of David Copperfield; Jane Welsh Carlyle
, also in attendance, acidly noted that Gaskell was a natural unassuming...
Friends, Associates
Geraldine Jewsbury
GJ
first met the Carlyles
, just under a year after she had introduced herself by letter to Thomas
.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Howe, Susanne. Geraldine Jewsbury: Her Life and Errors. George Allen and Unwin, 1935.
