ARISTOCRATIC WOMEN

The Social, Political and Cultural History of Rich and Poweful Women

Part 1: The Correspondence of Jemima, Marchioness Gray (1722-97) and her Circle

Projects of Related Interest

Women’s Language and Experience, 1500-1940

Women’s Diaries and Related Sources

Editor:  Dr Amanda Vickery, Lecturer in Modern British Women’s History, Royal Holloway, University of London

“The local record offices of Great Britain hold staggering quantities of manuscripts written by women.  Only now is this vast resource being tapped.  Women’s own writings facilitate the exploration of a multiplicity of themes from the construction of identity to the composition of political communities, from the intimacies of emotional life to the structure of society.”

Dr Amanda Vickery

Scattered throughout the local record offices of England, Scotland and Wales are vital yet neglected sources for the study of women’s history:  Diaries, commonplace books, travel journals and letters which describe women’s lives and experiences in their own language.

This new project brings together such sources for the first time and makes possible a general overview of the condition of women in Britain from 1500 to 1940.  It will suggest answers to questions such as:

Did women actually conform to prescribed models of authority?  How did women’s aspirations and fantasies match up with their real lives?  Did women employ the rhetoric of submission selectively, with irony, or quite cynically?

This project will encourage work by scholars across many disciplines including English, Politics, History, the Social History of Medicine, Social Policy and Women’s Studies.

Subjects covered include:

• Sexuality, masculinity & femininity
• Courtship & marriage
• Household organization & authority
• Childbearing, childrearing & parenting
• Medicine & health
• Women’s paid & unpaid work
• Informal & institutionalized charity
• Religion & ethical values
• Gentility, politeness & snobbery
• Tourism, taste & commercialized leisure
• Political culture & social structure
• Perceptions of female destiny
• Female education & professional aspirations
• Equal rights feminism

Part 1:  Sources from the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire County Record Offices

Part 1 comprises nearly 100 volumes describing the lives of 25 women, 1670-1922.

The earliest sequence of diaries (in 7 volumes) describe the life of Dame Sarah Cowper between 1670 and 1715.  She pours forth her views on almost very subject, especially on marriage and fidelity:

“Sunday, going early to Church, I chanced to be present at a wedding, the most melancholy sight one can see, and affects me strangely.

…To hear a simple woman promise to love without cause, and obey without Reason, is amazing….”  (Volume I, p268).

The 18th Century is particularly well covered.  No fewer than 14 volumes describe the lives of Mary, Harriet, Charlotte and Anne Orlebar in the period 1751-1830.  As well as their daily observations on their households, their children and their social lives, there is much of literary interest – including the poetry of Mary, their unofficial poet laureate, who commemorated important family events in verse.

Another volume of great poetical interest is the Commonplace book of Lady Anne Blount, marked on the spine as “Stella’s works”.  A typical inclusion in this volume is “To Sir Harry Blount on his saying he wou’d not have a fiddle on my Lady’s birth day”, signed “Stella” but “Pope” is marked at the top.

Further 18th Century diaries include those of Mary, Countess Cowper (covering 1714-1720), Catherine Talbot (for 1745), Elizabeth Wheeler (for 1778, an excellent diary with outspoken political comments and notes on her reading) and an anonymous volume for 1720.

The manuscript autobiography of Frances Stackhouse covers her life from 1794 to 1881 and is especially valuable for her comments on her schooling, the birth of her daughter and her observations made when Humphry Davy, Sidney Smith and Joseph Banks visited.

Equally wide-ranging in subject matter are the musings of Frederica Rouse-Boughton (covering 1859-1864).  As well as her gloriously illustrated travel journals, we cover her devotional volume, where she comments:  “I for my own part I think an immense deal of nastiness often lurks behind the ‘respectability’ of us ‘ladies’….”

Two long diary sequences are those of Jane Johnstone (in 23 volumes, 1817-1840, with lengthy notes on the living conditions of labourers and servants, charity work, gambling and contemporary amusements) and Louisa Arrowsmith (in 17 volumes, 1818-1837, with much about her garden, the theatre etc).

The diaries of Adela Capel, aged 14, and Eliza Hope Stevens, aged 9 (by her governess) describe the education and upbringing of girls in the first half of the 19th Century.  Both texts illuminate the construction of gender roles and the socialization of girls.

These are but a few of the highlights of a truly exciting collection that will open many fresh avenues for research.

Part 2:  Sources from Birmingham Central Library and Birmingham University Library

Part 2 covers the lives of a further 31 women in the period from 1744 to 1940 and broadens the project considerably.

The manuscript autobiography of Mrs Florry details her life and activities  from 1744 to 1812.  Her father was an ironmaster in Birmingham at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and she had to take over and run the business when he died in 1788.

The journals of Mary and Martha Russell (family friends of Joseph Priestley), record impressions of the French Revolution, the Birmingham riots of 1791 and their travels in America between 1794 and 1801 (including their capture by French pirates en route).

Religious associations and campaigns constituted one of the few public arenas for privileged women.  A clutch of diaries, 1838-1939, demonstrate the ways in which charity, missionary activity and early social work enabled women to exercize power and to lay claim to active citizenship.

Other valuable sources include the diary of a farmer’s wife (1823-7), and the marvellous travel journals of Helen Caddick (1889-1914), enormously evocative of her age and class while recording the most extraordinarily adventurous travels for a middle-aged, middle-class woman of her time.

Part 3:  Sources from Suffolk County Record Office and Cambridge University Library

A further 23 women’s lives, spanning from 1680 to 1943, are covered in Part 3, including those of Elizabeth Lyttleton (1680), Sophia Churchill (1777-1780), Maria Grey (1829-1848), and Juliet Goodlee (1884-1943).  There are diaries describing the wives of surgeons and diplomats, journals of independent travellers and commonplace books collecting poetry, quotations and personal observations.

Further parts of this project feature sources from the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Wales, Essex Record Office, Somerset Record Office and many other libraries. Parts 4 – 6 Available

Women’s diaries have fulfilled the roles of friend, confessional, scrapbook and analyst.  Now they are offered as a revealing historical record.

“The examination of women’s manuscripts will enable scholars to engage critically with the categories, modes of explanation, and chronology of recent women’s history.  Feminist theory can be evaluated and developed by applying it to the range of empirical material offered in Women’s Language & Experience.”

Dr Amanda Vickery

Women, Education and Literature

The Papers of Maria Edgeworth, 1768-1849

Part 1:  The Edgeworth Papers from the Bodleian Library, Oxford

Both as an Educator and as an Author, Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) deserves our attention.  In Practical Education  (1798) she demanded that the shackles should be removed from female education:

“[A woman’s] knowledge must be various, and her powers of reason unawed by authority….”

With Castle Rackrent (1800) she played a prominent part in the development of the novel.  For this is recognized as the first fully developed regional novel and the first true historical novel in English.

In her letters, her educational works and her novels, Maria Edgeworth displays a fine eye for the telling detail, an effortless narrative style and a clear concern for social issues.

Jane Austen was an admirer and sent her one of the first printed copies of Emma.  Balzac, Chekhov, Gogol, George Sand, Thackeray and Turgenev were all influenced by her, and Sir Walter Scott acknowledged his debt to her in the Preface to his Waverley Novels in 1829.

Notwithstanding this, there has been no complete edition of her letters and work has only begun recently on an edition of her major writings.  This project provides scholars with immediate access to the original manuscript records and will help those working on the new Pickering & Chatto edition.  Drawing upon the two major Edgeworth archives at the Bodleian Library, Oxford and the National Library of Ireland, and also including important items from other scattered collections, it gives scholars access to a rich horde of her manuscripts and letters.  These provide an important resource for the study of:

• Literary life & society, c1789-1850
• Women’s writing and women’s reading
• New theories of education in the Enlightenment
• Female education
• Life in Ireland c1750-1850
• The writings of Maria Edgeworth
• The history of the novel

Given the highly collaborative nature of the literary and educational work of the Edgeworth family we have also included the correspondence and manuscripts of other family members – particularly her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817).  Inventor, educator, and writer, he was also the wealthy landlord of substantial estates in Edgeworthstown in County Longford, Ireland.  Married 4 times, he was the father of 22 children of which Maria was the second eldest to survive.  Radical and eccentric Richard Lovell Edgeworth brought up his children to be observant and inquiring and introduced them to the ideas of his friends such as Erasmus Darwin, Mrs Barbauld, Joseph Priestley, Sir Humphrey Davy and John Herschel.

Maria was thus privy to the intellectual, scientific and political debates that raged at the time of the Industrial Revolution in Britain and political revolutions in America and France.

During an illness, Maria came much under the influence of another friend of her father’s, Thomas Day (1748-1789), humanitarian and author of the didactic novel, Sandford and Merton (1783-9).  He was committed to Rousseau’s theories for the education of women, particularly those outlined in Emile.  But whilst this embodied a broad base of learning, it was also a schooling in submission, and Day was horrified when Richard Edgeworth encouraged Maria to be more free-thinking and to consider writing.  Her precocious story-telling gifts began to emerge and in her letters and notebooks she started to assemble material for future writings.

Her first original publication was Letters to Literary Ladies (1795), a plea for female education, followed by several other educational works – The Parents Assistant (1796), Practical Education (1798), Moral Tales (1801) and Early Lessons (1801) – produced with her father and introducing story elements.  It is in these works that Edgeworth’s distinctive fictional voice begins to emerge.

However, it was Castle Rackrent (1800), Belinda (1801 – praised by the heroine of Northanger Abbey), Leonora (1806), Tales of Fashionable Life (1809 and 1812), Cottage Life (1811) and Patronage (1814) which brought her fame and she was lionized when she visited London in 1803, meeting among others Byron, Sydney Smith, Joanna Baillie and Crabb Robinson.

Maria Edgeworth published two further works – Ormond and Harrington (both 1817 – the latter involving the love of a Christian hero for a Jewish woman) – before her father’s death.  After that she concentrated on her father’s Memoirs (1820) and her own writings ceased, save for Helen (1834) and her prodigious correspondence.

Part 1 of this project is based on the holdings of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and falls largely into three categories:  literary manuscripts; correspondence; and miscellaneous papers.

The literary manuscripts feature over 15 notebooks with draft passages for published and unpublished works; story plans, poems and notes on reading.  There are also draft and fair copies of published works, anecdotes and outlines of plays.

Among the highlights are:

• Enigma, a poem by Maria Edgeworth
• Notes for Harry and Lucy
• Two notebooks compiled by Mrs Honora Edgeworth recording her children’s responses to lessons and forming the basis of Practical Education
• Drafts of On the Education of the Poor in the hand of Maria Edgeworth
• Notes for The parent’s assistant
• Two outlines for Ormond
• A fragmentary draft of Harrington
• An account of hawking for Helen together with a lost outline
• A notebook entitled `Travellers & Popular Tales´
• Notes for an unwritten novel about Ireland
• An outline of a story entitled `The Life and death of a divorcée´
• A copy of `The Devil’s thoughts´ by S T Coleridge, “as read by Sir Humphrey Davy”
• Two manuscript essays in the hand of André Morellet
• Lines written by Mrs Barbauld in her 80th year

The correspondence is equally rich and includes c2000 letters from Maria Edgeworth, with many more from other family members.

Correspondents featured include:

• Henry Addington
• Joanna Baillie
• Mrs Barbauld
• Lady Bathurst
• Erasmus Darwin
• Sir John Herschel
• Archbishop William Howley
• Leigh Hunt
• Elizabeth Inchbald
• Edouard LaGrange
• J L Moilliet
• André Morellet
• David Ricardo
• William Roscoe
• Sir Walter Scott
• Thomas Spring-Rice
• Elizabeth Waller
• Richard Whateley

The correspondence is principally for the period from 1818 to 1849.  Earlier correspondence is in the National Library of Ireland’s section of the Edgeworth Papers (Part 2 of this project).

The miscellaneous papers contain much additional useful material for the biographer of Maria Edgeworth.  Notably:

• Financial and Estate Papers
• Genealogical notes & pedigrees
• Drawings, silhouettes, daguerreotypes and photographs

Finally, there is a Calendar of the Edgeworth family correspondence in the Bodleian Library and the National Library of Ireland, compiled by Mrs Colvin.

The second part of this project, based on the holdings of the National Library of Ireland, mainly concentrates on papers prior to 1817.  Maria’s schooldays and family life are well documented, including her own reflections on the education and upbringing of women and consideration of works such as Rousseau’s Emile and Locke’s On Education.  Views of contemporary literature include discussions of the writings of Austen, Mme de Stael, Franklin, Godwin, Erasmus Darwin, “Monk” Lewis, Scott and others.

The development of Maria Edgeworth’s own writing can be traced through letters discussing the origins, preliminary versions, publication and critical reception of Castle Rackrent and other works.

Also covered are Richard Lovel Edgeworth’s intellectual and business pursuits, the family’s tour of Belgium and France and numerous literary manuscripts, including 4 volumes of family verse and the manuscript of Maria’s Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth Esq.

A third and final part brings together further scattered sources concerning Maria Edgeworth from libraries in Britain and America.  It includes the two volume manuscript of Helen – from the British Library; and over 50 letters from Birmingham University Library.  Parts 2 & 3 will be covered by a separate Guide.

The publication of the Edgeworth papers is an important event for Literary Studies and will provide the raw material for many dissertations and long essays and Women’s writing, Literary Society and Anglo-Irish literature.

The Lady’s Monthly Museum, 1798-1828

First appearing just 6 years after Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, this journal was in the vanguard of periodicals advocating female improvement.

Written by a “society of ladies” it asserted that “the acquisition of languages, simple mathematics, astronomy, natural and experimental philosophy, with history and criticism may be cultivated by the sex with propriety and advantage.”

It is noteworthy for its original poetry and prose; criticism; fashion; and reader’s letters.  The `Old Women´ was a forerunner of today’s Agony Aunt and responds to an interesting range of problems.

We offer a complete run of this journal from 1798 to 1828, when it was merged with The Lady’s Magazine, with which it is instructive to compare it.

A Women’s View of Drama, 1790-1830

The Diaries of Anna Margaretta Larpent in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California

Anna Margaretta Porter (1758-1824) was the daughter of Sir James Porter the diplomat.  Like many young girls she was encouraged to keep a diary which started in earnest in 1773.  In 1782 she became the second wife to  John Larpent (1741-1824) who had been appointed Examiner of Plays in England in November 1778.

The Examiner of Plays was an extremely influential figure in the development of drama and was much more powerful than modern censors.  All plays required licensing before performance and the Examiner had the sole power to issue the licenses.

Both husband and wife collaborated in the work with the result, according to L W Conolly’s study of John Larpent in 1976, that Anna Margaretta Larpent became “practically a Deputy Examiner”.  Most valuably, she recorded her reading, her criticisms and her verdicts in her diary.

What survives is a remarkable record of the reading experiences of an intelligent woman from the late Eighteenth Century to the early Nineteenth Century.  Furthermore, the record of a woman who was deliberately reading critically and expressing views on morality and propriety.

This was a period of great success for British Theatre, but also one of great turmoil.  A period dominated by Sheridan, the Kembles, Sarah Siddons, and the Keans.  A period in which tragedy was brought to new heights and Shakespeare was played with greater historical accuracy; but also a period in which spectacle became more important and in which melodramas were introduced.  A fecund period for writers, the Larpents were faced with a mountainous pile of drama – good and bad – to read through.

Anna Margaretta Larpent was a champion and an admirer of Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821) who had made her play-writing debut in 1784 with A Mogul Tale, or The Descent of the Balloon and over 21 years wrote 20 comedies, farceas, and translations from French and German including the version of Kotzebue’s Lovers’ Vows (1798) the drama enacted by the Bertram Family in Austen’s Mansfield Park and a play in which Larpent saw not “the least Immorality.”

The diary also includes criticism of many other contemporary female dramatists as well as their male counterparts.

The diary sequence starts in 1790 and Larpent notes:

“I observed much, talked little.  As I grew older I wrote better – the employment delighted me, and gave spirit to all my occupations.”

Well indexed, the diary ends in 1830; providing more than 30 years of sustained dramatic criticism.

This unique source provides critical insights into the development of British drama, 1790-1830; the role of censorship; and changing values in society.

It also provides a window into the life and reading of educated society lady from the time of the French Revolution to the Age of Reform.

“Live over my life in this book… praise me where you can.  Condemn me where you must; But love me every where if you can”

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