Devoney Looser

“Her Later Works Happily Forgotten”: Rewriting Frances Burney and Old Age

This essay considers Frances Burney’s last published work, Memoirs of Doctor Burney (1832), for its sustained attention to gender, aging, and authorship. When the Memoirs is read from cover to cover, significant and previously unnoticed patterns emerge that offer new insights into Burney’s conceptions of and ruminations on authorial celebrity in old age. The narration of the Memoirs provides a compelling picture of what an aged woman author was up against in fashioning a persona in her text. Examining the complicated reception of the Memoirs also advances our discussion of Burney’s little read—and too-often misunderstood—late writings. This essay concludes that the Memoirs ought to be revalued for its importance to literary history and feminist aging studies, at the same time providing a new line of inquiry to help us make sense of its supposed failure.

Mary Wollstonecraft, "Ithuriel," and the Rise of the Feminist Author-Ghost

This essay considers the ways in which pioneering eighteenth-century feminist Mary Wollstonecraft has been imagined as speaking from beyond the grave. It considers what the undead Wollstonecraft means—and has meant—to the histories of literature and feminism. Examining representations of Wollstonecraft alongside those of other eighteenth-century author-shades, the essay demonstrates that Wollstonecraft’s ghostly renderings have important resonances with those of her male literary predecessors as well as implications for how and why modern feminists came to be “haunted” by her. The last section of the essay examines an unpublished 1798 fictional manuscript, “Ithuriel,” located among the papers of historical novelist Jane Porter. “Ithuriel” depicts Wollstonecraft as a speaking spirit in conversation with other celebrated dead women. This previously unknown text (published as an appendix to this essay) shows us the instantiation of Wollstonecraft’s specter, born out of a particular moment in the late eighteenth-century development of professional authorship and literature and at a watershed moment for early modern feminism.

Stephanie Russo Women in Revolutionary Debate: Female Novelists from Burney to Austen

Late twentieth-century scholarship on British women’s novels of the 1790s and 1800s often set out to assign political labels to authors along a radical/ Jacobin and conservative/anti-Jacobin divide. In the wake of the recovery of this once-celebrated then long-neglected fiction, this project of labeling made a certain amount of sense. Political debate was exceedingly polarized in this era, and women’s fiction of the period had not yet been sufficiently examined as a vehicle for political philosophizing. Little of their writing had been examined period. It is refreshing, then, that we have arrived at a scholarly moment in which the imperative to so label has passed. Stephanie Russo’s book is exemplary in its more capacious understanding of British female-authored novels’ political implications, complex rhetoric, and literary effects. Women in Revolutionary Debate consists of an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion. Most chapters consider multiple works of fiction (and a few works of nonfiction) by a single woman writer, to argue for new ways of seeing her texts’—and, implicitly, her own—politics. Most of the names are very familiar ones among those who study British Romanticism, including Frances Burney, Charlotte Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Robinson, Maria Edgeworth, and, of course, Jane Austen. Only one, Mrs. Bullocks (author of Dorothea [1801], a novel in the quixotic and anti-Jacobin mold), remains obscure. Russo’s argument unfolds over the course of these chapters in close readings with copious, careful plot summary. She concludes that ‘‘female novelists used the novel to articulate and interrogate revolutionary politics,’’ which ‘‘demonstrated the capacity of novels to rise above their somewhat dubious representation’’ as a genre (187). Throughout the

Jane Austen’s Afterlife, West Indian Madams, and the Literary Porter Family: Two New Letters from Charles Austen

Jane Austen’s beloved naval brother, Charles Austen (1779–1852), had a significant impact on her literary career. We find probable traces of him in the male characters appearing in Mansfield Park (1814) and Persuasion (1818), and he is said to have offered naval vocabulary to help his sister revise the second edition of Mansfield Park (1816). In addition to his impact during Jane’s lifetime (1775–1817), Charles played a role in sustaining her posthumous celebrity, modest as it was at first. Two previously unpublished brief letters by him—and references to him in other correspondence—offer an opportunity to speculate about his role in supporting his late sister’s literary reputation. Transcriptions of these letters are included at the end of this essay; we encourage readers to go to them first and then return to our commentary. The letters definitively establish Charles’s friendship with artist, travel writer, and diplomat Sir Robert Ker Porter (1777–1842), as well as his contact with Sir Robert’s celebrated novelist sisters, Jane Porter (bap. 1776– 1850) and Anna Maria Porter (1778–1832). The Misses Porter, as they were

THE GREAT MAN AND WOMEN'S HISTORICAL FICTION: JANE PORTER AND SIR SIDNEY SMITH

This essay investigates the ways in which Jane Porter (bap. 1776–1850) drew on the life and writings of war hero Sir Sidney Smith in her innovative historical novel Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803). In the first part of this essay, the author examines the rhetoric of military heroism employed in Porters Thaddeus, demonstrating her developing notions of Smiths importance as a model for the eras “Great Man”. The author shows that Porters high regard for Smiths military and personal merits was not based merely on knowledge gleaned from the popular press, but on her personal acquaintance with Smith and his family. The Porters’ connection to Smith did not end in 1803, as the author describes in the second part of the essay, documenting through unpublished letters Porters lifelong and apparently unrequited love for Smith. The author argues that Smith heavily influenced the ways in which Porter conceived of the interrelations of domestic and military registers in her groundbreaking historical fiction, shaping her understandings of men, women, authorship and heroism in wartime.

Feminist Pioneers, Feminist Classics: Reflections on Age and Generation in Scholarship on Romantic-Era Women's Writings

This essay, conceived as a response to Anne Mellors Romanticism and Gender (1993), considers the authors Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain 1750–1850 (2008) in the context of contemporary scholarship on Romantic-era womens writings. First, the author assesses her own work in relation to generations of feminism and feminists, arguing for the importance of adding investigations of age to our collective work. Next, she compares the reviews of her and Mellors books to illustrate the ongoing benefits and pitfalls of publishing on Romantic-era womens writing.

Recent Studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century

An assessment of recent scholarly work treating the literature of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century and some general observations on the state of the profession. A full bibliography and price list of the works received by SEL for consideration follow.

The Porter Sisters, Women’s Writing, and Historical Fiction

Throughout the nineteenth century, the Porter sisters (or the ‘Misses Porter’, as they were called) were mentioned alongside the likes of Jane Austen, Frances Burney, and Maria Edgeworth in accounts of celebrated women writers. Claiming such critical prominence for the Porters may now seem exaggerated. If so, it is because their careers have not been fully assessed, despite the burgeoning of feminist scholarship in this pivotal period for the professional woman writer. It was, as Cheryl Turner puts it, the era of ‘the emergence of female literary professionalism’ as well as ‘the rise of women’s prose fiction’, interrelated phenomena in which the Porters played a central role.1 Recent criticism has laid the groundwork for further attention to their fiction, but few attempts have been made to trace the contours of their remarkable lives or their innovative novels.2 In this chapter, I argue for the prominence of Jane Porter (bap. 1776–1850) and Anna Maria Porter (1780–1832) in the history of women’s writings from this period. Returning the achievements of both women to literary history is not only a project of recovery; it also provides us with the opportunity to revisit long-held assumptions about the origins of historical fiction and the role of the professional woman writer in the flowering of the genre.

Brilliant Women: Eighteenth-Century Bluestockings (review)

A familiar image provides the impetus for this landmark exhibit: richard samuel’s Portraits in the Characters of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo (The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain) from 1778. As national Portrait Gallery Director sandy nairne puts it in his foreword to the catalog, this exhibit is “the first occasion that [samuel’s] portrait imagery and [its subjects’] biographies have been examined together to encourage a much fuller sense of how the intellectual achievements of the bluestockings were received and understood” in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (8). Though feminist scholars have been piecing together this reception history for some years now, Brilliant Women is groundbreaking in its linking of the literary, visual, and material culture of the bluestockings.