LIST OF MINOR WRITERS
(Their dates will indicate their place in our history of development: where they are not alluded to.)
Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle (1624-1673), in her CCXI Sociable Letters (1664), tells an imaginary narrative by correspondence, which she describes as “rather scenes than letters, for I have endeavoured under cover of letters to express the humours of mankind.” Also author of Nature’s Pictures drawn by Fancie’s pencil (1656).
Frances Sheridan.—Her Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph, extracted from her own Journal (1761), made a name by its supreme melancholy. The heroine suffers from obeying her mother, and receives no reward. Dr. Johnson “did not know whether she had a right, on moral principles, to make her readers suffer so much.”
Miss Clara Reeve (1725-1803) began to write novels at fifty-one, and attempted in The Old English Baron (1777) to compromise with the School of Terror, by limiting herself to “the utmost verge of probability.” Her “groan” is not interesting, and Scott complains of “a certain creeping and low line of narrative and sentiment”; adding, however, that perhaps “to be somewhat prosy is a secret mode of securing a certain necessary degree of credulity from the hearers of a ghost-story.”
Anna Seward (1747-1809), a florid and picturesque poetess, whose verse-novel Louisa was valued in her day. She has a place in Scott’s Lives of the Novelists.
Charlotte Smith (1749-1806).—Her The Old Manor House reveals independent, and novel, appreciation of scenery, illustrated by an unobtrusive familiarity with natural history. Her plots “bear the appearance of having been hastily run up,” but her characterisation is vigorous. There is a “tone of melancholy” throughout.
Harriet (1766-1851) and Sophia (1750-1824) Lee wrote some of the earliest historical novels—The Recess; or, A Tale of other Times (1783), introducing Queen Elizabeth and the “coarse virulence that marks her manners,” and the Canterbury Tales, from which Byron borrowed.
Mrs. Bennet, whose Anna; or, The Memoirs of a Welsh Heiress (1785) is a bad imitation of Miss Burney, “with a catchpenny interspersion.”
Regina Maria Roche, author of the once popular The Children of the Abbey (1798). Richardson, diluted with Mackenzie—in “elegant” language.
Mrs. Opie (1769-1853).—One of her best stories, Adeline Mowbray; or, The Mother and Daughter (1804), is partially founded on the life of Godwin, and shows the influence of his theories.
Jane Porter (1776-1850), author of Thaddeus of Warsaw and The Scottish Chiefs, who claimed unjustly to have “invented” the historical romance, copied by Scott. Very famous in her day.
Also Anna Maria Porter (1780-1832), author of Don Sebastian.
Mrs. Brunton (1778-1818), author of the excellent Self-Control (1811) and Discipline (1814), which were overshadowed by Susan Ferrier. Lacking humour, her morality becomes tiresome, but she could draw living characters. The Highland experiences of her heroine, who, after marrying a minister, retained “a little of her coquettish sauciness,” are significant for their date.
Lady Morgan (1783-1859), as Miss Sydney Owenson, published Wild Irish Girl (1806), which is a fairly spirited réchauffé of all things Celtic. Thackeray found here the name Glorvina, meaning “sweet voice.”
Henrietta Mosse (otherwise Rouvière), whose A Peep at our Ancestors (1807) and other novels have been described as “blocks of spiritless and commonplace historic narrative.”
Anna Elizabeth Bray (1789-1883), author of The Protestant, various competent historical romances, and “local novels.”
Mrs. Sherwood, an evangelical propagandist, who naïvely enforced her views in The Fairchild Family (1818) and Little Henry and his Bearer.
Elizabeth Sewell set the style of High-Church propaganda, developed by Miss Yonge. Her chief tales, Gertrude and Amy Herbert (1844), are rigidly confined to everyday life. The characters, if living, are uninteresting; and her morals are obtrusive.
Catherine Gore (1799-1861), author of over seventy tales; and, in her own day, “the leader in the novel of fashion.”
Lady G. Fullerton (1812-1885), author of Emma Middleton, who shares with Miss Sewell the beginnings of High Church propaganda in fiction.
Anne Caldwell (Mrs. Marsh), one of the best writers of the “revival” in domesticity. Her Emilia Wyndham (1846) was unfairly described as the “book where the woman breaks her desk open with her head.” Though contemporary with Pendennis, has no ease in style.
Mrs. Archer Clive (1801-1873), author of an early and well-told story of crime, entitled Paul Ferroll (1855).
Mrs. Henry Wood (1814-1887).—A good plot-maker, whose East Lynne—both as book and play—has been phenomenally popular for many years; though The Channings, and others, are better literature.