A Book of Sibyls: Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen

Ritchie, Anne Thackeray, 1837-1919Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.7
Word count
316K words
Chapters
32

Tags

English Originals Literary Figures Life EncountersLiterary GiantsGroup BiographyLiterary Criticism19th CenturyFemale WriterFemale Perspective

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.A Book of Sibyls: Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen by RitchieAuthor: Ritchie, Anne Thackeray, 1837-1919,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Nov 9, 2009

Editor's review

This book is Anne Thackeray Ritchie's collection of critical biographies of four English women writers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: Barbauld, Edgeworth, Opie, and Austen. The author, daughter of a novelist and a Victorian literary reader, writes in a mode between biography, commentary on works, and period reminiscence, in a gentle tone warmed by firsthand acquaintance. Its strength lies in placing the four women writers within the concrete circumstances of family, the publishing market, and social circles, showing how they entered the literary world under constrained conditions. The account of Austen is especially often cited by later generations, but the book as a whole belongs more to mid-nineteenth-century appreciative taste than to modern scholarly criticism. It suits readers interested in the history of British women's literature and the reception history of Austen as background reading, and can also serve as a window into how the Victorians imagined the women writers of the previous generation.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read by unit for each of the four writers, reviewing each one's major works after finishing her section to set works against commentary.
  2. When reading the Austen chapter, read it alongside a modern Austen biography and note the historical difference in evaluative standards.
  3. Mark the author's observations, as a contemporary, on the situation of women's writing to build up background material for literary history.
  4. Treat the book as background reading rather than an introductory guide, and come to it with basic knowledge of the four writers' works.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32

FAQ

Is this book a complete biography of the four writers? No. It is closer to a collection of critical biographies and essays, focused on commentary on works, character sketches, and period atmosphere rather than a full year-by-year life. For detailed chronologies and documentary scholarship, look for modern scholarly biographies; this book is suitable as supplementary background reading.
Why is the Austen section often mentioned? Ritchie came from a literary family, and her account carries a contemporary's close-up impression of Austen, so it is often cited in later Austen studies as material for early reception history. But the evaluations in the book still belong to mid-nineteenth-century appreciative taste and should be distinguished from later scholarship.
How difficult is the original English edition? It is in nineteenth-century English essay style, with long sentences and many allusions and forms of address, posing a certain barrier for readers unfamiliar with the literary background of the period. It is advisable to learn the four writers' major works and basic lives first; the book will then read much more smoothly.

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About the author

Ritchie, Anne Thackeray, 1837-1919 Author · British · 1837–1919

Anne Thackeray Ritchie (1837–1919) was a British novelist and essayist, and the daughter of the celebrated writer William Makepeace Thackeray. Growing up amid the literary atmosphere of the Victorian age, she wrote in a style that combines the narrative drive of fiction with the discursive charm of the essay. Two of her works are held here: A Book of Sibyls, a collection of essays on Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie and Miss Austen, reflects her interest in the tradition of women's writing and her delicate critical appreciation; Old Kensington, set in the old district of Kensington in London, is steeped in local memory and nostalgia. Her prose is gentle and unhurried, skilled in the close rendering of character and scene, and she held a recognized place in the British literary world of the late nineteenth century. Public information is limited, and the details of her life and the full range of her work await further study.