Dr Johnson's Women

Dr Johnson's Women

by NormaClarke (Author)

Synopsis

Dr Johnson's friendships with the leading women writers of the day was an important feature of his life and theirs. He was willing to treat women as intellectual equals and to promote their careers: something ignored by his main biographer, James Boswell. Dr Johnson's Women investigates the lives and writings of six leading female authors Johnson knew well: Elizabeth Carter, Charlotte Lennox, Elizabeth Montagu, Hester Thrale, Hannah More and Fanny Burney. It explores their relationships with Johnson, with each other and with the world of letters. It shows what it was like to be a woman writer in the 'Age of Johnson'. It is often assumed that women writers in the eighteenth century suffered the same restrictions and obstacles that confronted their Victorian successors. Norma Clarke shows that this was by no means the case. Highlighting the opportunities available to women of talent in the eighteenth century, Dr Johnson's Women makes clear just how impressive and varied their achievements were.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
Edition: New Ed
Publisher: Pimlico
Published: 03 Mar 2005

ISBN 10: 0712645985
ISBN 13: 9780712645980
Book Overview: 'I dined yesterday at Mrs Garrick's with Mrs Carter, Miss Hannah More and Miss Fanny Burney. Three such women are not to be found; I know not where I could find a fourth, except Mrs Lennox, who is superior to them all.' Samuel Johnson, 15 May 1784

Media Reviews
This entertaining, scholarly book suggests how they [women] disappeared and why figures such as Lennox deserve to be remembered. * Tom Boncza-Tomaszewski, Independent *
Author Bio
Norma Clarke is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Kingston University. She is the author of Ambitious Heights: Writing, Friendship, Love. The Jewsbury Sisters, Felicia Hemans and Jane Carlyle, The Rise and Fall of the Woman of Letters (published by Pimlico), many essays on eighteenth and nineteenth-century writers and five novels for children.