DOCSLIB.ORG

Natural History and British Women Writers, 1730-1830 By

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Natural History and British Women Writers, 1730-1830 By NATURAL HISTORY AND BRITISH WOMEN WRITERS, 1730-1830 BY MELISSA R. BAILES DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Ted Underwood, Chair Professor Robert Markley Professor Gillen Wood Assistant Professor Justine Murison ii Abstract The late eighteenth-century poet, Maria Riddell, used zoological hybridity as a racial metaphor for West Indian colonies’ potential to foster “British” national identity, with its mixed heritage and allegiances. This is the subject of my dissertation’s second chapter, and what it shows is that, at a time when women writers did not possess political power, some, such as Riddell, exerted cultural authority through the natural sciences. Natural history (comprising the fields of botany, zoology, and geology) dramatically rose in popularity in the latter half of the eighteenth century. During this time, naturalists drew analogies between natural and social orders, arranging “classes” and “kingdoms” in ways that naturalized cultural and national hierarchies. My manuscript, Natural History and British Women Writers, 1730-1830, argues that women, including Eliza Haywood, Charlotte Smith, and Mary Shelley, often claimed scientific superiority to naturalists to destabilize seemingly fixed identities and revise not only biological but also social and literary taxonomies. For example, my third chapter explores Anna Seward’s development of a literary taxonomy that interrelates biological and poetic forms. Through this attention to women’s scientific literature, my study also casts new light on the period’s debates about literary originality, with important consequences for our understanding of writers such as Alexander Pope, Oliver Goldsmith, William Wordsworth, and Lord Byron. iii Acknowledgments While completing this dissertation, I received encouragement and financial support in the form of an American Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in 2010-11. This award provided time and funds at a crucial juncture of my writing and research. In December 2010, I also received an Ernestine Richter Avery Fellowship from the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, enabling me to trade an Illinois winter for the Huntington’s sunny gardens and rich archives. I would like to thank my committee members, including Robert Markley, Justine Murison, Gillen Wood, and particularly my director, Ted Underwood, for their belief in the value of my work and for their willingness to read, and help me revise, countless drafts of this manuscript. It was during a directed reading with Jennifer Keith that I first had the idea for this project, and her influence as a friend and mentor has been steadfast throughout my graduate career. Allison Davis and Kristen Pond “reckoned” with me through many conversations, scholarly and otherwise, helping me to keep everything in perspective. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my family, and especially to my brother, Eric, my uncle, Alan, and my grandmother, Virginia Bailes. For their unceasing love, sacrifices, and support in helping me attain my goals, I dedicate this work to my mother, Sue Ellen, and to the memory of my father, Richard Hilton Bailes. iv Table of Contents Questioning Nature: An Introduction……..………………………………………………1 Chapter 1: To Think and to Please: Anna Barbauld’s Poetry and Educational Prose of Natural History………………………………………………………………...…20 Chapter 2: Hybrid Britons: West Indian Colonial Identity and Maria Riddell’s Natural History……………………………………………………………………………57 Chapter 3: The Evolution of the Plagiarist: Natural History in Anna Seward’s Order of Poetics……………………………………………………………………………85 Chapter 4: Charlotte Smith and the Poet-Naturalist’s Collective Originality…………..115 Chapter 5: Revolutionary Cosmopolitanisms: Helen Maria Williams’s Politico- Geological Nature……………………………………………………………....159 Chapter 6: The Privatization of Geological Catastrophe in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man…………………………………………….……………………..209 Epilogue: Laughter and Lava: Felicia Hemans, Feminine Propriety, and Romantic Geology…………………………………………………………………………250 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………....283 1 Questioning Nature: An Introduction In 1761, the famous naturalist and director of the Académie Française, Georges- Louis Leclerc (comte de Buffon), gave a speech celebrating the exploration of Peru by the Académie’s newly-elected member, Charles Marie de la Condamine. He enthralled the audience, illuminating the voyager’s daring descent down the Amazon over dangerous rapids and foaming falls in a dugout canoe. Before closing his lively account, Buffon paused to add with emphatic wonder, “Nature, accustomed to the deepest silence, must have been astonished to hear herself questioned for the first time.”1 The immense applause meeting this statement evinced naturalists’ pervasive feeling that it was not only in the deepest recesses of South America that nature found “herself” being “questioned for the first time” during this era of unprecedented interest and progress in the natural sciences. Feminizing nature for masculine exploration, Buffon’s declaration embodies a commonplace rhetorical gesture of the new science, as when Francis Bacon earlier urged fellow naturalists to “penetrate from Nature’s antechamber to her inner closet” to “conquer and subdue her.”2 Yet, in the midst of this androcentrism and the eighteenth century’s mania for natural history grew a literary phenomenon in which women entered the scientific arena and posed difficult questions – both to nature and to (male) naturalists themselves. Natural history (comprising the fields of botany, zoology, and geology) dramatically rose in popularity in the mid eighteenth century and succeeding decades.3 1 Jacques Roger, Buffon: A Life in Natural History. Trans. Sarah Bonnefoi (Cornell UP, 1997) 214. 2 Quoted in Anne Mellor’s “A Feminist Critique of Science.” Carolyn Merchant, Evelyn Fox Keller, and Brian Easlea have delineated the “negative consequences of this identification of nature as the passive female.” 3 During this period, “natural history sold ‘the best of any books’ in England,” see Jacqueline Pearson, Women’s Reading in Britain, 1750-1835: A Dangerous Recreation (Cambridge UP, 1999), 67. 2 At this time, an ascending, internationally collaborative and competitive generation of naturalists, prominently including Carl Linnaeus of Sweden, Buffon of France, and Thomas Pennant of Britain, strove to configure taxonomies of the natural order. Long eighteenth-century inquiries in the natural sciences analyzed constructions of personhood, of the self, through taxonomic categories. Investigating, for example, the extent to which biological organisms shape and are shaped by their environment, as well as ways in which nature models society. In determining the answers to such questions, naturalists constructed categories defining not only natural objects, but also human subjects, formulating concepts of gender, race, and nation through interpretations of nature and its influence. Through social analogies, naturalists’ taxonomies granted them a sense of understanding and even controlling nature’s relationship to individuals and nations, and of providing insight into virtually every level of existence. In their authoritative knowledge of nature, and goals to find or create order, naturalists pervasively reinforced gender and racial hierarchies. Yet, despite the frequency of such prejudices, their individual observations, classifications, and conclusions regarding the natural order were subject to incessant attack and revision by fellow naturalists. In their publications, Linnaeus and Buffon, for instance, ruthlessly besieged one another’s methods and taxonomic theories throughout their careers. Naturalists also corrected their own published taxonomies in successive editions as new information or discoveries became available. Projecting this paradox of a simultaneously unquestionable authority and the uncertainty indicative of natural history’s openness to inquiry, taxonomic power structures subjugating various forms of the “other” could be exploited to achieve disparate aims, ranging from upholding the status quo to exposing classificatory failings, 3 and thus threatening these constructed orders or systems and their social implications. As my study will show, some women writers seized natural history’s analogical opportunities to reconfigure social, national, and even literary orders and identities. Indeed, this contemporary sense of scientific uncertainty put the line between fact and fiction in doubt, blurring the division between literature and science. In the eighteenth century, the sciences were still in development and would not become disciplines until the early nineteenth century; although I use the word “science” in its modern connotation, previous to science’s professionalization the term could constitute any branch of knowledge, including literature. Capitalizing on this potential fluidity, imaginative writers could debate, disseminate, and contribute scientific knowledge through their literary works. Tim Fulford, Debbie Lee, and Peter Kitson explain that it was not customary formally to divide fictional from factual writing until De Quincey in 1848 made fiction a defining characteristic of the ‘literature of power’ and claimed it was distinct from the ‘literature of knowledge’. By this distinction
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Anna Seward and the Poetics of Sensibility and Control Andrew O
    Criticism Volume 58 | Issue 2 Article 9 2016 Anna Seward and the Poetics of Sensibility and Control Andrew O. Winckles Adrian College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism Recommended Citation Winckles, Andrew O. (2016) "Anna Seward and the Poetics of Sensibility and Control," Criticism: Vol. 58 : Iss. 2 , Article 9. Available at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol58/iss2/9 ANNA SEWARD At the 2011 meeting of the North American Society for the Study AND THE POETICS of Romanticism, Anne K. Mellor OF SENSIBILITY reflected on how the field has AND CONTROL changed since her foundational Andrew O. Winckles 1993 study Romanticism and Gender. She commented that, though women writers such as Anna Seward and the End of the Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, Eighteenth Century by Claudia and Mary Shelley have cemented Thomas Kairoff. Baltimore, MD: themselves as legitimate objects Johns Hopkins University Press, of study, this has largely been at 2012. Pp. 328. $58 cloth. the expense of a broader under- standing of how women writers were working during the period. In addition to the Big Six male Romantics, we have in many cases simply added the Big Three female Romantics.1 Though this has begun to change in the last ten years, with important studies appearing about women like Anna Letitia Barbauld, Mary Robinson, Joanna Baillie, and Hannah More, we still know shockingly little about women writers’ lives, cultural con- texts, and works. A case in point is Anna Seward, a poet and critic well known and respected in her own lifetime, but whose critical neglect in the nineteenth and twentieth centu- ries has largely shaped how recent critics interact with her work.
    [Show full text]
  • Staying Optimistic: the Trials and Tribulations of Leibnizian Optimism
    Strickland, Lloyd 2019 Staying Optimistic: The Trials and Tribulations of Leibnizian Optimism. Journal of Modern Philosophy, 1(1): 3, pp. 1–21. DOI: https://doi.org/10.32881/jomp.3 RESEARCH Staying Optimistic: The Trials and Tribulations of Leibnizian Optimism Lloyd Strickland Manchester Metropolitan University, GB [email protected] The oft-told story of Leibniz’s doctrine of the best world, or optimism, is that it enjoyed a great deal of popularity in the eighteenth century until the massive earthquake that struck Lisbon on 1 November 1755 destroyed its support. Despite its long history, this story is nothing more than a commentators’ fiction that has become accepted wisdom not through sheer weight of evidence but through sheer frequency of repetition. In this paper we shall examine the reception of Leibniz’s doctrine of the best world in the eighteenth century in order to get a clearer understanding of what its fate really was. As we shall see, while Leibniz’s doctrine did win a good number of adherents in the 1720s and 1730s, especially in Germany, support for it had largely dried up by the mid-1740s; moreover, while opponents of Leibniz’s doctrine were few and far between in the 1710s and 1720s, they became increasing vocal in the 1730s and afterwards, between them producing an array of objections that served to make Leibnizian optimism both philosophically and theologically toxic years before the Lisbon earthquake struck. Keywords: Leibniz; Optimism; Best world; Lisbon earthquake; Evil; Wolff The oft-told story of Leibniz’s doctrine of the best world, or optimism, is that it enjoyed a great deal of popularity in the eighteenth century until the massive earthquake that struck Lisbon on 1 November 1755 destroyed its support.
    [Show full text]
  • Anna Seward and the End of the Eighteenth Century Kairoff, Claudia T
    Anna Seward and the End of the Eighteenth Century Kairoff, Claudia T. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Kairoff, Claudia T. Anna Seward and the End of the Eighteenth Century. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Project MUSE., <a href=" https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/12865 Access provided at 24 Oct 2019 11:50 GMT with no institutional affiliation This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Bibliography Adams, Malise Forbes, and Mary Mauchline. “Kauffman’s Decorative Work.” In Angelica Kauffman: A Continental Artist in Georgian England, edited by Wendy Wassyng Roworth, 113–40. London: Reaktion, 1993. Alexander, David. “Chronological Checklist of Singly Issued English Prints after Angelica Kauffman.” In Angelica Kauffman: A Continental Artist in Georgian En- gland, edited by Wendy Wassyng Roworth, 179–89. London: Reaktion, 1993. ———. “Kauffman and the Print Market in Eighteenth-century England.” In Angelica Kauffman: A Continental Artist in Georgian England, edited by Wendy Wassyng Roworth, 141–78. London: Reaktion, 1993. Ashmun, Margaret. The Singing Swan: An Account of Anna Seward and Her Acquain- tance with Dr. Johnson, Boswell, and Others of Their Time. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1931. Austen, Jane. Letters. Edited by Deirdre Le Faye. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. ———. Sense and Sensibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Backscheider, Paula R. Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Backscheider, Paula R., and Catherine E. Ingrassia, eds. British Women Poets of the Long Eighteenth Century: An Anthology.
    [Show full text]
  • Erasmus Darwin's Romanticism
    Rhyme and Reason: Erasmus Darwin’s Romanticism Noel Jackson ore remarkable, it may seem, than the sudden disappearance of Mscientific poetry from the late-eighteenth-century English liter- ary landscape is the fact that it was ever widely read in the first place. “Philosophical poetry,” as it was then known, and especially the work of its most famous practitioner, Erasmus Darwin, has been scorned as a gimmicky, tedious, frequently laughable exercise. This ugly stepsister of didactic verse amalgamates poetic fancy and scientific fact, yoking versified descriptions to prose notes detailing the contemporary state of research in natural philosophy, industrial technology, botany, chem- istry, and medicine, to name only a few subjects of this poetry. In an often-cited letter to John Thelwall, Samuel Taylor Coleridge boasted of his catholic taste in poetry, professing an almost equal appreciation for “the head and fancy of Akenside, and the heart and fancy of Bowles,” among others1 — but none for such fanciful productions of the brain as Darwin’s paean to the steam engine, in part 1 of The Botanic Gar- den, The Economy of Vegetation.2 Coleridge’s disappointed wish, recorded 1 Coleridge to Thelwall, December 17, 1796, in Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956 – 71), 1:279. Here- after cited as STCL. Coleridge’s opinion of The Botanic Garden is concise enough: “I absolutely nauseate Darwin’s poem” (Coleridge to Thelwall, May 13, 1796, in STCL, 1:216). 2 Darwin published part 2 of the poem, The Loves of the Plants, first, in 1789.
    [Show full text]
  • Nachdruckverzeichnis
    Nachdruckverzeichnis Mit Ausnahme von Kapitel 7, bei dem es sich um einen neuen Beitrag für den vor- liegenden Band handelt, erschienen die Kapitel ursprünglich an folgenden Orten: Kapitel 1 Querelles 1 (1996), 77–104. Kapitel 2 Anke Gilleir / Alicia Montoya / Suzan van Dijk (eds.): Women Writing Back / Writing Women Back. Leiden/Boston 2010, 73–92. Kapitel 3 Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte VII/4 (Winter 2013), 41–52. Kapitel 4 Rainer Bayreuther u.a. (Hg.): Kritik in der Frühen Neuzeit: Intellektuelle avant la lettre. Wolfenbütteler Forschungen. Wiesbaden 2011, 191–216. Kapitel 5 Ina Schabert / Barbara Schaff (Hg.): Autorschaft: Genus und Genie in der Zeit um 1800. Berlin 1994, 105–124. Kapitel 6 Comparatio 10/1 (2018), 1–18. Kapitel 8 Caroline Lusin (Hg.): Empathie, Sympathie und Narration: Rezeptionslenkung in Prosa, Drama und Film. Heidelberg 2015, 225–239. Kapitel 9 Andreas Hartmann / Fritz Neumann (Hg.): Mythen Europas: Schlüsselfguren der Imagination. Vom Barock bis zur Aufklärung. Regensburg 2007, 166–187. Kapitel 10 Hadumod Bußmann / Renate Hof (Hg.): Genus: Zur Geschlechter- differenz in den Kulturwissenschaften. Stuttgart 1995, 162–205. Kapitel 11 Comparative Critical Studies 6/1 (2009), 149–164. Kapitel 12 Annette Keilhauer / Lieselotte Steinbrügge (éds.): Pour une histoire genrée des littératures romanes. Éditions Lendemains 32. Tübingen 2013, 105–118. Kapitel 13 Literature Compass 11/10 (2014), 667–676. Kapitel 14 Renate von Bardeleben (Hg.): Frauen in Kultur und Gesellschaft. Tübingen 2000, 1–17. © Der/die Herausgeber bzw. der/die Autor(en), exklusiv lizenziert durch Springer- 265 Verlag GmbH, DE, ein Teil von Springer Nature 2021 I. Schabert, Die Gleichheit der Geschlechter, Die Feministische Aufklärung in Europa | The Feminist Enlightenment in Europe | Les Lumières européennes au feminin, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-62981-9 Abbildungsverzeichnis Abb.
    [Show full text]
  • The Perfect Wife”
    “THE PERFECT WIFE” BY RACHAEL CARNES ESTIMATED RUNNING TIME — 90 MINUTES CAST — SIX PERFORMERS Rachael Carnes, member: Dramatists Guild, National New Play Network, Playwrights Center, AWP 1050 W 17th Ave, Eugene OR 97402, 541-221-5792 www.rachaelcarnes.com [email protected] © 2017, All Rights Reserved. SUMMARY As revolution between England and its American colonies simmers, candy-colored Georgian society pits the woeful, starving masses against the excessive powers of the rich elite. One bright young man, Sir Thomas Day, rebuffed at every turn from would- be wives, despite his fortune, grows frustrated, and hatches a plan to steal an orphan, and raise her to be the Perfect Wife. Based on real events, this work of historical fiction opens in the Shrewsbury Foundling Hospital, with Day on the hunt. CHARACTERS Thomas Day A tall, dark-haired, pock-marked man of 21, disheveled, with stringy, matted long hair, dirty fingernails and drab, misshapen and fraying, but expensive, clothes. Sabrina (Anne) An “orphaned” girl, 12 years old, red-haired, freckled, dressed in a rough-hewn smock and no shoes. DUAL ROLES (MAN) Richard Etheridge A wealthy Irish inventor of useless mechanicals and Day’s foppish friend, a few years his elder, powdered and be- wigged, spritely as a grasshopper, he dresses in the au courante dandy Georgian men’s style — trussed in a corset, with fat, padded calves and a stuffed chest. Ferry Master Middle-aged, muscular, he wears a threadbare, high-cut sailor’s uniform, heavy black fisherman’s shoes and a wide, flat black hat over a dusty white bonnet.
    [Show full text]
  • Erasmus Darwin
    ERASMUS DARWIN “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Erasmus Darwin HDT WHAT? INDEX ERASMUS DARWIN ERASMUS DARWIN 1619 In London, William Harvey confirmed the fact of circulation of the blood. What remained to be figured out was the mechanism by which this was occurring — as we didn’t as yet know of the network of capillaries inside the tissue by which the circuit is completed. Between this year and 1628 he would be constructing his theory of circulation. THE SCIENCE OF 1619 HDT WHAT? INDEX ERASMUS DARWIN ERASMUS DARWIN 1621 The botanist John Tradescant joins the service of the Duke of Buckingham, George Villiers. At Oxford, founding of the 1st botanic garden in Britain, by Lord Henry Danvers, the Earl of Danby, 76 years after the founding of the 1st continental garden. This was probably inspired by John Tradescant’s garden of exotic plants in South Lambeth. THE SCIENCE OF 1621 HDT WHAT? INDEX ERASMUS DARWIN ERASMUS DARWIN 1690 Denis Papin published his first work on the steam engine, DE NOVIS QUIBUSDAM MACHINIS. The function of his steam engine was to raise water into a canal between Kassel and Karlshaven. He also used a steam engine to pump water to a tank on the palace roof, that supplied water for the fountains in the gardens. THE SCIENCE OF 1690 HDT WHAT? INDEX ERASMUS DARWIN ERASMUS DARWIN 1698 Thomas Savery’s “fire engine,” the first working steam engine, amounted to a pump operated by steam power which had no moving parts.
    [Show full text]
  • The Way to Otranto: Gothic Elements
    THE WAY TO OTRANTO: GOTHIC ELEMENTS IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH POETRY, 1717-1762 Vahe Saraoorian A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 1970 ii ABSTRACT Although full-length studies have been written about the Gothic novel, no one has undertaken a similar study of poetry, which, if it may not be called "Gothic," surely contains Gothic elements. By examining Gothic elements in eighteenth-century poetry, we can trace through it the background to Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, the first Gothic novel. The evolutionary aspect of the term "Gothic" itself in eighteenth-century criticism was pronounced, yet its various meanings were often related. To the early graveyard poets it was generally associated with the barbarous and uncouth, but to Walpole, writing in the second half of the century, the Gothic was also a source of inspiration and enlightenment. Nevertheless, the Gothic was most frequently associated with the supernatural. Gothic elements were used in the work of the leading eighteenth-century poets. Though an age not often thought remark­ able for its poetic expression, it was an age which clearly exploited the taste for Gothicism, Alexander Pope, Thomas Parnell, Edward Young, Robert Blair, Thomas and Joseph Warton, William Collins, Thomas Gray, and James Macpherson, the nine poets studied, all expressed notes of Gothicism in their poetry. Each poet con­ tributed to the rising taste for Gothicism. Alexander Pope, whose influence on Walpole was considerable, was the first poet of significance in the eighteenth century to write a "Gothic" poem.
    [Show full text]
  • The Adventurous History of Sabrina Sidney
    CONSTRUCTING THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY WOMAN: THE ADVENTUROUS HISTORY OF SABRINA SIDNEY By KATHARINE ILES A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham For the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY School of History and Cultures College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham April 2012 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT The story of Thomas Day’s attempt to educate a young girl according to the theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, with the aim of marrying her, has often been referred to as a footnote in Enlightenment history. However, the girl chosen by Day, Sabrina Sidney, has never been placed at the centre of any historical enquiry, nor has the experiment been explored in any depth. This study places Sabrina at its centre to investigate its impact on her and to examine the intellectual and societal debates that informed Thomas Day’s decision to educate a wife. This thesis argues that Sabrina Sidney was in a constant state of construction, which changed depending on a myriad of factors and that constructions of her were fluid and flexible.
    [Show full text]
  • Richard Lovell Edgeworth a Selection from His Memoirs Edited by Beatrix L
    1 RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH A SELECTION FROM HIS MEMOIRS EDITED BY BEATRIX L. TOLLEMACHE (HON. MRS. LIONEL TOLLEMACHE) RIVINGTON, PERCIVAL & CO. KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN LONDON 1896 LIFE IS AN INN THERE is an inn where many a guest May enter, tarry, take his rest. When he departs there's nought to pay, Only he carries nought away. 'Not so,' I cried, 'for raiment fine, Sweet thoughts, heart-joys, and hopes that shine, May clothe anew his flitting form, As wings that change the creeping worm. His toil-worn garb he casts aside, And journeys onward glorified.' B. L. T. RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH CHAPTER 1 Some years ago, I came across the Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth in a second-hand bookshop, and found it so full of interest and amusement, that I am tempted to draw the attention of other readers to it. As the volumes are out of print, I have not hesitated to make long extracts from them. The first volume is autobiographical, and the narrative is continued in the second volume by Edgeworth's daughter Maria, who was her father's constant companion, and was well fitted to carry out his wish that she should complete the Memoirs. Richard Lovell Edgeworth was born at Bath in 1744. He was a shining example of what a good landlord can do for his tenants, and how an active mind will always find objects of interest without constantly requiring what are called amusements; for the leisure class should be like Sundays in a week, and as the ideal Sunday should be a day when we can store up good and beautiful thoughts to refresh us during the week, a day when there is no hurry, no urgent business to trouble us, a day when we have time to rise above the sordid details of life and enjoy its beauties; so it seems to me that those who are not obliged to work for their living should do their part in the world by adding to its store of good and wise thoughts, by cultivating the arts and raising the standard of excellence in them, and by bringing to light truths which had been forgotten, or which had been hidden from our forefathers.
    [Show full text]
  • Eighteenth- Century Poetry (2001)
    A COMPANION TO EIGHTEENTH- C ENTURY POETRY EDITED BY CHRISTINE GERRARD CCEC_PR.inddEC_PR.indd iiiiii 66/9/2006/9/2006 22:37:34:37:34 PPMM A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry CCEC_PR.inddEC_PR.indd i 66/9/2006/9/2006 22:37:34:37:34 PPMM Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture 1. A Companion to Romanticism Edited by Duncan Wu 2. A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture Edited by Herbert F. Tucker 3. A Companion to Shakespeare Edited by David Scott Kastan 4. A Companion to the Gothic Edited by David Punter 5. A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare Edited by Dympna Callaghan 6. A Companion to Chaucer Edited by Peter Brown 7. A Companion to Literature from Milton to Blake Edited by David Womersley 8. A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture Edited by Michael Hattaway 9. A Companion to Milton Edited by Thomas N. Corns 10. A Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry Edited by Neil Roberts 11. A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture Edited by Phillip Pulsiano and Elaine Treharne 12. A Companion to Restoration Drama Edited by Susan J. Owen 13. A Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing Edited by Anita Pacheco 14. A Companion to Renaissance Drama Edited by Arthur F. Kinney 15. A Companion to Victorian Poetry Edited by Richard Cronin, Alison Chapman, and Antony H. Harrison 16. A Companion to the Victorian Novel Edited by Patrick Brantlinger and William B. Thesing 17–2 0. A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works: Volumes I–IV Edited by Richard Dutton and Jean E.
    [Show full text]
  • An Introduction to Mary Steele, the Author of Danebury and the Power of Friendship, a Tale with Two Odes by a Young Lady
    Georgia Southern University Digital Commons@Georgia Southern Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies, Jack N. Averitt College of Spring 2008 Resurrecting the Anonymous: An Introduction To Mary Steele, the Author of Danebury and The Power of Friendship, A Tale with Two Odes by a Young Lady Amanda J. Holmes Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd Recommended Citation Holmes, Amanda J., "Resurrecting the Anonymous: An Introduction To Mary Steele, the Author of Danebury and The Power of Friendship, A Tale with Two Odes by a Young Lady" (2008). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 174. https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/174 This thesis (open access) is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies, Jack N. Averitt College of at Digital Commons@Georgia Southern. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@Georgia Southern. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RESURRECTING THE ANONYMOUS: AN INTRODUCTION TO MARY STEELE, THE AUTHOR OF DANEBURY AND THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP, A TALE WITH TWO ODES BY A “YOUNG LADY” by AMANDA HOLMES (Under the Direction of Timothy Whelan) ABSTRACT Published anonymously in 1779 Danebury, or the Power of Friendship, a Tale with Two Odes, has retained its anonymity for over two centuries. Evidence found in the Reeves and Steele Collections housed at Angus Library; Regent’s Park College, Oxford identifies the author as Mary Steele, a provincial young woman with a Nonconformist background who was an active participant in a literary coterie that included other published authors such as Mary Scott, Anne Steele, and Hannah More.
    [Show full text]