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.
ST
's writing arose out of her work for two causes, religion and education, brought most closely together in her interest in Sunday schools. She edited magazines and was a pioneer both in animal stories...
Publishing
Mary Wollstonecraft
It was dedicated to the French statesman Talleyrand
, a supporter of the Revolution and the reputed lover of Germaine de Staël
. She produced a second, revised edition by the end of the year...
Publishing
Elizabeth Sarah Gooch
Gooch must have spent heavily on advertising. From 5 April until 5 May front-page advertisements for her book appeared in the London Star and other papers. They took up an unusual number of column-inches, since...
Reception
Hester Mulso Chapone
Her brother John
wrote of the Praises that resound on all Sides following the publication of this book, though he regretted that reviewers, in praising the moral content, had ignored the literary style.
qtd. in
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon, 1990.
These anecdotes are indeed genuine insofar as they feature a number of actual characters, notably Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
, Philippe duc d'Orléans
, and their daughter or reputed daughter Pamela
. These characters reflect, in...
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
Elizabeth Fenton
Fenton sets out to paint a a familiar picture of the everyday occurrences, manners, and habits of life of persons undistinguished either by wealth or fame
Fenton, Elizabeth. The Journal of Mrs. Fenton. Editor Lawrence, Sir Henry, Edward Arnold, 1901.
1-2
in British India. But this is largely unfulfilled...
Textual Features
Mary Wollstonecraft
These stories (told by the governess Mrs Mason to her pupils with the explicit aim of improving their characters) reflect the specific influence of Tales of the Castle by Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
. Mrs Mason...
Textual Features
Harriet Martineau
Her subjects in the first essay are Hannah More
(especially her Practical Piety and An Essay on the Character and Practical Writings of Saint Paul) and Anna Letitia Barbauld
, whom she regarded as...
Textual Features
Mary Wollstonecraft
Though only about twenty percent of its extracts are written by women (the same proportion as from the Bible),
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
501
this book is feminist in its emphasis on the virtue of independent judgement as...
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers, 1870, 2 vols.
1: 133, 152
She despises Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
as a delightful mixture of cant and affectation...
Textual Features
Eliza Parsons
The story is set in Germany (which at this date was seen in England as the land of romance)
qtd. in
Hoeveler, Diane Long, and Eliza Parsons. “Introduction”. The Castle of Wolfenbach, edited by Diane Long Hoeveler and Diane Long Hoeveler, Valancourt Books, 2007, p. vii - xvii.
x
and the heroine, Matilda Weimar, appears to be German, though she turns out to...
Textual Features
Katharine Tynan
Lord Edward was a nephew of KT
's earlier fictional subject, Lady Sarah Lennox
. A highly romantic, aristocratic revolutionary, he died of his wounds in prison on 4 June 1798, after the Rebellion of...
Textual Features
Sarah Trimmer
This use of instruction cards was innovative, at least in England. ST
may or may not have known of the cards issued by Sarah Scott
and Lady Barbara Montagu
in April 1759 (which failed as...
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...
