Anonymity, Irish women’s writing, and a tale of contested authorship: Blue stocking hall (1827) and Tales of my time (1829) ANGELA BYRNE* Ulster University [Accepted 02 January 2019. Published 27 February 2019] Abstract This paper addresses the question of the authorship of two anonymous nineteenth-century novels—Blue stocking hall (1827) and Tales of my time (1829). These novels were long attributed to the English Unitarian minister and writer William Pitt Scargill, but this has come into question with the suggestion that Cork-born Anna Maria Chetwood was the author. This paper examines the surviving evidence in the publisher’s archive and in the private papers of a coterie of Irish writing women associated with Chetwood to assess existing assumptions and received narratives relating to the candidates for authorship. It firstly places the novels in the wider context of Irish romanticism and then clarifies the heretofore little-known biographies of the two women most likely to have authored the novels, before considering the evidence for each woman. Finally, the novels are briefly assessed within the context of the written corpus of the Chetwood–Wilmot circle’s poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Introduction In 1827 and 1829, two hefty three-volume novels were published in London, under the titles Blue stocking hall and Tales of my time; 1829 also saw the re- lease of a second edition of the epistolary Blue stocking hall. Both works were published anonymously, but the title page of Tales of my time proclaimed that it was by the same author as Blue stocking hall.1 Almost immediately, newspapers *Author’s email:
[email protected] ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2549-8939 doi: https://doi.org/10.3318/PRIAC.2019.119.02 Thanks to Dr Katherine Byrne for her helpful comments on an earlier draft, and to the two anonymous readers whose suggestions improved the paper.