Charlotte SmithCharlotte Smith was one of the most prolific writers of her day (she lived from 1749 to 1807), but her radical republican sympathies during and after the French Revolution eroded her popularity with wary English-speaking critics and readers. Today, however, she is recognized as an important figure in the development of women's writing. She enhanced the novel of sensibility with the romantic description of nature and used the sublime and the picturesque as part of the sentimental-gothic style that she developed and Ann Radcliffe later imitated. In this comprehensive, reliable survey of all of Smith's work - poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and children's books - Carrol L. Fry looks at Smith as a proto-feminist, a woman quite unusual for her time, and seeks to bring to today's readers an awareness of Smith as one of the most important writers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Fry argues that Smith's works reflect the sweeping political and cultural changes of her day. Such novels as The Old Manor House (1793) and Marchmont (1796), he contends, reflect the idealism of British liberalism in the early days of the French Revolution, contemporary republican views on issues that would be part of the British reform movement for the next hundred years, and criticism of the way British society allowed those with wealth and power to abuse the law. Fry finds implicit in Smith's later novels the theme of the powerlessness of women in the patriarchal society of the late eighteenth century. Using unpublished manuscript material - primarily Smith's copious letters - Fry gives readers a glimpse of this turbulent era and the literature it generated. Smith's work reflects a time whendemocratic revolutions swept aside ancient privilege and created a new social order, when women writers began the feminist critique, and when romanticism was aborning. Fry's book will bring a new respect for Smith's writing and a fresh insight into the importance of this powerful woman in the canon of British romanticism. |
From inside the book
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Page 27
... theme - civilization's corruption of nature , a theme that she would develop more fully in " Beachy Head . " Also , in Smith's later poetry , she no longer uses the pastoral in the conventional manner , but as a thematic device to state ...
... theme - civilization's corruption of nature , a theme that she would develop more fully in " Beachy Head . " Also , in Smith's later poetry , she no longer uses the pastoral in the conventional manner , but as a thematic device to state ...
Page 34
... themes of the work — the human misery wrought by the war between England and France that had raged intermittently since 1793 and the parallel theme of the quiet endurance of nature in the face of human savagery . The statesmen whose ...
... themes of the work — the human misery wrought by the war between England and France that had raged intermittently since 1793 and the parallel theme of the quiet endurance of nature in the face of human savagery . The statesmen whose ...
Page 92
... THEME IN THE OLD MANOR HOUSE As Smith wrote The Old Manor House , Louis XVI was still alive ; and although moderate British republicans were distressed by the actions of the unruly mob in Paris , they retained hope that the revolution ...
... THEME IN THE OLD MANOR HOUSE As Smith wrote The Old Manor House , Louis XVI was still alive ; and although moderate British republicans were distressed by the actions of the unruly mob in Paris , they retained hope that the revolution ...
Common terms and phrases
18th century Althea Ann Radcliffe appeared aristocrat Beachy Head beautiful Beinecke Benjamin Smith Bethel Britain British republicans castle Celestina characters Charlotte Smith conventional criticism Curran d'Alonville daughter death Delamere Desmond Dorset editions of Elegiac Elegiac Sonnets Elizabeth Inchbald Emmeline England English established Ethelinde father feelings France French Revolution Geraldine Glenmorris gothic gothic fiction Grasmere Helen Maria Williams hero heroine Hilbish Huntington husband instance Jacobin language later literary London Marchmont Maria marriage marry Mary Mary Wollstonecraft Montalbert nature Newenden novelists Old Manor House Orlando passage passion poems poet political Preface published readers reason refers reflects Review romantic romanticism Rosalie Rousseau scene sensibility slave slavery Smith describes Smith's letters Smith's novels social Story of Henrietta sublime taste tells theme tion tyranny University Press volume Wanderings of Warwick Werther William Cowper William Hayley Willoughby Wollstonecraft women Wordsworth writes written wrongs of woman Young Philosopher