All materials ©2000 Cynthia Stodola Pomerleau, except where noted

Autobiography and the "History" of Women
¹John Langdon-Davies, A Short History of Women (New York: Viking Press, 1927), p. 358.
²Elizabeth Gould Davis, The First Sex (Baltimore: Penguin Books, Inc., 1972), p. 299.
³Margaret George, One Woman's "Situation": A Study of Mary Wollstonecraft (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970), p. viii.
⁴Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1929), p. 77.
⁵Doris Mary Stenton, The English Woman in History (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1957).
⁶Quoted in Myra Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England: 1650-1760 (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1964), p. 300.
⁷Ibid., p. 142.
⁸Roy Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 1-20.
⁹ Dean Ebner, Autobiography in Seventeenth-Century England (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), p. 19.
¹⁰Ibid.
¹¹Anna Robeson Burr, The Autobiography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1909), p. 225.
¹²From an epitaph on her often attributed to Ben Jonson.
¹³John Milton, "Paradise Lost," Book IV, 11. 297-98 (Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes, New York: The Odyssey Press, 1957, p. 285).
¹⁴Quoted in Reynolds, op. cit., p. 316.
¹⁵Ibid., p. 51.
¹⁶Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, ed. Charles W. Hagelman, Jr. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1967), p. 86.
¹⁷Woolf, op. cit., passim.


Autobiographies Before 1700
¹See Georg Misch, A History of Autobiography in Antiquity, translated in collaboration with the author by E. W. Dickes (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1950).
²Wayne Shumaker, English Autobiography: Its Emergence, Materials and Form (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954).
³Paul Delany, British Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 7.
⁴Dean Ebner, Autobiography in Seventeenth-Century England (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), p. 16.
⁵See James M. Osborn, "The Beginnings of Autobiography in England: A Paper delivered by James M. Osborn at the Fifth Clark Library Seminar, 8 August, 1959" (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, 1959).
⁶"In 1800 it was estimated that there were 450,000 women and but 375,000 men in London." Jay Barrett Botsford, English Society in the Eighteenth Century: As Influenced from Oversea (New York: Macmillan, 1924), p. 280.
⁷Calculated from the bibliography in Delany, op. cit.
⁸We must, of course, keep this fact in perspective. The only way we can distinguish pioneering works from literary dead ends is by what ultimately comes to be popularly accepted as the norm. The reticent record of a distinguished public career has its own dignity; but--partly because women have become a larger part of the reading and writing public and thus have played a larger role in the formation of literary taste--a more personal, confessional tone has come to be the hallmark of autobiographical excellence.
⁹Lady Lucy Knatchbull, autobiography in Sir Tobie Matthew, The Life of Lady Lucy Knatchbull, ed. Dom David Knowles (London: Sheed and Ward, 1931), pp. 27-49. Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
¹⁰Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, Lives of Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery (1590-1676) and of her Parents. Summarized by Herself (London: Roxburghe Club, 1916). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
¹¹Ebner, op. cit., p. 80.
¹²William York Tindall, John BunyanMechanick Preacher (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934), p. 30.
¹³Luella M. Wright, The Literary Life of the Early Friends: 1650-1725 (New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1966), p. 261.
¹⁴Anna Trapnel, A Legacy for Saints (London: T. Brewster, 1634). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
¹⁵Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, "A True Relation of My Birth and Breeding," in The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, ed. C. H. Firth (London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd., n.d.). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
¹⁶Quoted in Henry Ten Eyck Perry, The First Duchess of Newcastle and her Husband as Figures in Literary History (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1918), p. 227.
¹⁷Quoted in Firth, op. cit., p. 209.
¹⁸Quoted in Myra Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England: 1650-1760 (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1964), p. 49.
¹⁹Quoted in Perry, op. cit., p. 240.
²⁰Quoted in Firth, op. cit., pp. xxx-xxxi.
²¹Perry, op. cit., p. 251.
²²Quoted in Firth, op. cit., p. 175.
²³Quoted in Firth, ibid.
²⁴Quoted in Reynolds, op. cit., p. 49.
²⁵Quoted in Perry, op. cit., p. 85.
²⁶Quoted in Reynolds, op. cit., p. 52.
²⁷Quoted in Reynolds, ibid., p. 51.
²⁸Quoted in Reynolds, ibid., pp. 51-52.
²⁹Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, ed. James Sutherland (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1963; 3rd ed.), p. 280 (Book I, 11. 141-42).
³⁰Quoted in Perry, op. cit., p. 207.
³¹Quoted in Reynolds, op. cit., p. 51.
³²Quoted in Firth, op. cit., p. 32
³³Firth, ibid., p. xxx.
³⁴Lucy Hutchinson, "The Life of Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson," in Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson (London: Henry G. Bohn,, 1854). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
³⁵Donald A. Stauffer, English Biography before 1700 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930), p. 154.
³⁶Delany, op. cit., p. 166.
³⁷Anne Fanshawe, Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
³⁸Delany, op. cit., p. 162.
³⁹John Donne, "A Valediction: forbidding mourning," 1. 21, in The Poems of John Donne, ed. Herbert J. C. Grierson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), p. 50.
⁴⁰Ebner, op. cit., p. 82
⁴¹Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, Some Specialities in the Life of M. Warwicke, ed. T. C. Croker (London: Percy Society, 1848, vol. 22). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
⁴²Anne Halkett, The Autobiography of Anne Lady Halkett, ed. John Gough Nichols (London: Camden Society, 1875). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
⁴³Margaret Bottrall, Every Man a Phoenix (London: John Murray, 1958), p. 153.
⁴⁴Delany, op. cit., p. 162.
⁴⁵Alice Curwen, A Relation of the Labour, Travail and Suffering of . . . Alice Curwen (1680, no other information given). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
⁴⁶Mary Penington, Some Experiences in the Life of Mary Penington, ed. Norman Penney (London: Headley Bros., 1911). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
⁴⁷Delany, op. cit., p. 166.
⁴⁸Ibid.
⁴⁹Elizabeth Andrews, "An Account of the Birth, Education and Sufferings for the Truthıs Sake of that faithful Friend, Elizabeth Andrews," Journal of the Friends Historical Society (London, xxvi (1929), pop. 3-8. Page numbers cited refer to this publication.
⁵⁰Joan Vokins, Godıs Mighty Power Magnified (London: T. Northcott, 1691). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
⁵¹I do not suggest that men were not subject to dissatisfaction; I am only trying to show the particular form which it took for women.
⁵²Margaret Fell Fox, "A Relation of Margaret Fell . . . ," in A Brief Collection of Remarkable Passages (London: J. Sowle, 1710). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
⁵³Anon., Autobiography of a woman, supposedly a relative of Cromwellıs, born in 1654. Ms. B. M. Add 5858, ff. 213-21. Page numbers follow this manuscript.
⁵⁴Barbara Blaugdone, An Account of the Travels, Sufferings, and Persecutions of Barbara Blaugdone (London: T. Sowle, 1691). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
⁵⁵Elizabeth Stirredge, Strength in Weakness Manifest (London: James Phillips, 1795). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
⁵⁶Alice Thornton, The Autobiography of Mrs. Alice Thornton of East Newton, Co. York, ed. Charles Jackson (Edinburgh: Surtees Society, 1875). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
⁵⁷Ebner, op. cit., p. 84.
⁵⁸Alice Hayes, A Legacy or A Widowıs Mite: Left by Alice Hayes (London: Darton & Harvey, 1836). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
⁵⁹Marion Fairly Veitch, Memoirs of Mrs. William Veitch . . . (Edinburgh: Committee of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland for the Publication of the Works of Scottish Reformers and Divines, 1846). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.


Historical Background: Before 1700
¹Donald A. Stauffer, The Art of Autobiography in Eighteenth Century England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), p. 132.
²Paul Delany, British Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 107.
³Myra Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1920), p. 46.
⁴Wayne Shumaker, English Autobiography: Its Emergence, Materials, and Form (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954), p. 23.
⁵Stauffer, English Autobiography Before 1700 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930), p. 207.
⁶Joyce M. Horner, "The English Women Novelists and their Connection with the Feminist Movement (1688-1797)," Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, 11 (1929), 89.
⁷The works cited by Stauffer, Delany, and Shumaker, and Dean Ebnerıs Autobiography in Seventeenth Century England (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), to name some examples.
⁸Delany, op. cit., pp. 10-11.
⁹Abraham Cowley, "Of My Self," in The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Abraham Cowley, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (New York: AMS Press, 1967), II, 340.
¹⁰Quoted in Lawrence Stone, The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), pp. 52-53.
¹¹John Reresby, The Travels and Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, Bart. (London: B. McMillian, 1813), p. 1.
¹²Thomas Raymond, in G. Davies, ed., The Autobiography of Thomas Raymond and Memoirs of the Family of Guise of Elmore, Gloucestershire (London: Camden Society, Third Series, vol. 28, 1917), pp. 59-60.
¹³Alice Thornton, The Autobiography of Mrs. Alice Thornton of East Newton, Co. York, ed. Charles Jackson (Edinbergh: Surtees Society, 1875), p. 99.
¹⁴Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, Some Specialities in the Life of M. Warwicke, ed. T. C. Croker (London: Percy Society, 1848, vol. 22), p. 20.
¹⁵Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, ed. C. H. Firth (London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd., n.d.), p. 160.
¹⁶Ibid., p. 163.
¹⁷Ibid., p. 161.
¹⁸Stone, op. cit., p. 144.
¹⁹Cavendish, op. cit., p. 160.
²⁰Rich, op. cit., pp. 19-20.
²¹Thornton, loc. cit.
²²Anne Halkett, The Autobiography of Anne Lady Halkett, ed. John Gough Nichols (London: Camden Society, 1875), pp. 20-22.
²³Ibid., pp. 67-69.
²⁴Rich, op. cit., p. 19.
²⁵Ibid.
²⁶Anne Fanshawe, Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830), pp. 98-99.
²⁷Ibid., pp. 124-246.
²⁸Cavendish, op. cit., pp. 146-47.
²⁹Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 46.
³⁰Fanshawe, op. cit., p. 31.
³¹I Cor. 11, 3; 7-9.
³²I Tim. 2, 11-14.
³³Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Policy, ed. Christopher Morris (London: J. M. Dent, 1964), II, 393.
³⁴John Donne, Sermons, ed. G. R. Potter and E. M. Simpson (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1955), II, 346.
³⁵Quoted in Katharine M. Rogers, The Troublesome Helpmate: A History of Misogyny in Literature (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966), p. 135.
³⁶Rogers, op. cit., p. 151.
³⁷Anne Davidson Ferry, Miltonıs Epic Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), pp. 141-42.
³⁸Christopher Hill, Puritanism and Revolution (London: Secker & Warburg: 1958), p. 388.
³⁹Lawrence Stone, "The Educational Revolution in England, 1560-1640," Past and Present, 28 (1964), 71-72.
⁴⁰Ibid., pp. 73-74.
⁴¹Quoted in Reynolds, op. cit., p. 111.
⁴²In James L. Clifford, Biography as an Art: Selected Criticism, 1560-1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 7.
⁴³Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1957), p. 188.
⁴⁴Roger Hart, English Life in the Seventeenth Century (London: Wayland Publishers, 1970), p. 24.
⁴⁵Watt, "Serious Reflections on The Rise of the Novel," Novel, 1 (1968), 205-218.
⁴⁶John J. Richetti, Popular Fiction Before Richardson: Narrative Patterns 1700-1739 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 1-22.
⁴⁷Cavendish, op. cit., p. 158.
⁴⁸Ebner, op. cit., p. 148.
⁴⁹Delany, op. cit., p. 5.
⁵⁰Jackson I. Cope, "Seventeenth-Century Quaker Style," PMLA, 62 (1956), 725-54.
⁵¹Luella M. Wright, The Literary Life of the Early Friends, 1650-1725 (New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1966).
⁵²William York Tindall, John Bunyan, Mechanick Preacher (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934).
⁵³G. A. Starr, Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965).
⁵⁴A. H. Upham, "Lucy Hutchinson and the Duchess of Newcastle," Anglia, 36 (1912), 200-220.
⁵⁵Ibid., p. 218.
⁵⁶Cavendish, op. cit., pp. 157-58.
⁵⁷Lucy Hutchinson, Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), p. 17.
⁵⁸Fanshawe, op. cit., p. 55.
⁵⁹Morris W. Croll, "The Baroque Style in Prose," in Studies in English Philology: A Miscellany in Honor of Frederick Klaeber, ed. Kemp Malone and Martin B. Rudd (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1929), p. 430.
⁶⁰Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society, ed. Jackson I. Cope and Harold Whitmore Jones (St. Louis, Missouri: Washington University Studies, 1958; facsimile of 1667 edition), p. 112.
⁶¹Ibid.
⁶²Ibid., p. 113.
⁶³Anon., Autobiography of a woman, supposedly a relative of Cromwellıs, born in 1654 (Ms. B. M. Add 5858, ff. 213021), pp. 412-13.
⁶⁴Croll, op. cit., p. 431.
⁶⁵Cavendish, op. cit., p. xxxix.
⁶⁶Ibid., p. xii.
⁶⁷Hutchinson, op. cit., p. 20.
⁶⁸Stauffer, Eighteenth Century, p. 258.


18th Century Autobiographies: 1700-1750
¹John Campbell Major, The Role of Personal Memoirs in English Biography and Novel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935), p. 153.
²Anon., The Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies, Commonly Called Mother Ross (London: R. Montagu, 1740), pp. 227-28.
³Anon., The Life, Voyages, and Surprising Adventures of Mary Jane Meadows (London: J. Bonsor, 1802), frontispiece.
⁴Roy Pascal, in Design and Truth in Autobiography (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 164, makes such a distinction: "the novel is complete in itself while the autobiography always reaches forward to the man writing."
⁵Works in this category include the writings of Martha Routh, Ruth Follows, Sarah Stevenson, and Jane Pearson; all are highly conventional Quaker productions.
⁶This work has never been published in its entirety, but Robert Halsband, in The Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), p. 2n, asserts that the excerpts quoted in George Paston, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her Times (London: Methuen & Co., 1907), p. 4 ff., are almost complete.
⁷Quoted in Halsband, op. cit., p. 2.
⁸This and all subsequent quotations are taken from Paston, op. cit. Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
⁹Paston, op. cit., p. 28.
¹⁰Elizabeth Webb, A Letter from Elizabeth Webb to Anthony William Boehm, in The Friends Library, vol. xiii (Philadelphia: Joseph Rakestraw, 1849), pp. 163-73. Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
¹¹Delariviere Manley, The History of Rivella, in The Novels of Mary Delariviere Manley, ed. Patricia Köster (Gainesville, Florida: Scholarsı Facsimiles and Reprints, 1971), 729-856. This is a facsimile reproduction of the 1714 edition. Page numbers cited refer to Köster.
¹²Paul Bunyan Anderson, "Mistress Delariviere Manleyıs Biography," Modern Philology, 33 (1936), 265.
¹³Köster, op. cit., I, vi.
¹⁴Ibid., pp. x ff.
¹⁵Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, ed. Harold Williams (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948; rpt. 1963), I, 306.
¹⁶Köster, op. cit., I, xxi-xxii; John J. Richetti, Popular Fiction Before Richardson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), passim.
¹⁷Köster, op. cit., I, 443.
¹⁸Ibid., p. xx.
¹⁹Ibid.
²⁰Richetti, op. cit., p. 125.
²¹Ibid., p. 124.
²²Köster, op. cit., I, 713-26.
²³Swift, op. cit., II, 474.
²⁴Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, Bk. II, 11. 69-73, ed. James Sutherland, in The Twickenham Edition of The Poems of Alexander Pope, V (London: Methuen & Co., 1943), 105-6.
²⁵Elizabeth Thomas, Introduction to Pylades and Corinna (London: Sir Edward Northey, 1731), p. lxiii. Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
²⁶Myra Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England 1650-1760 (Gloucester, Mass: Peter Smith, 1964), p. 176n.
²⁷Reprinted in Reynolds, op. cit., pp. 170-71. Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
²⁸Mary Granville Pendarves Delany, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, ed. Lady Llanover (London: Richard Bentley, 1861), I, vii. Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
²⁹Elizabeth Cairns, Memoirs of the Life of Elizabeth Cairns (Glasgow: John Grieg, n.d.). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
³⁰Donald A. Stauffer, The Art of Biography in Eighteenth Century England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 288.
³¹Sarah Jennings Churchill, Memoirs of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, ed. William King (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1930). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
³²Donald Greene, The Age of Exuberance (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 73.
³³Swift, quoted in King, op. cit., p. xi.
³⁴Quoted in Stella Margetson, Leisure and Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century (London: Cassell, 1970), p. 8.
³⁵Samuel Hopkins, Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Sarah Osborn (Worcester, Mass.: Leonard Worcester, 1799). The first thirty years are autobiographical. Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
³⁶Elizabeth Sampson Ashbridge, Some Account of the Early Part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge (Liverpool: James Smith, 1806). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
³⁷Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader, First Series (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1925), pp. 120-21.
³⁸Laetitia Pilkington, Memoirs of Mrs Letitia Pilkington, ed. Iris Barry (London: George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1928). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
³⁹Woolf, loc. cit.
⁴⁰The phrase "harmless household dove," interestingly, is taken from Drydenıs All for Love.
⁴¹Stauffer, op. cit., p. 99n.
⁴²Ibid., p. 97.
⁴³Ibid., p. 104.
⁴⁴Ibid., p. 107.
⁴⁵Henry Fielding, Amelia (Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1926), I, 30.
⁴⁶Teresia Constantia Phillips, An Apology for the Conduct of Mrs. T. C. Phillips (London: G. Smith, 1761). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
⁴⁷Stauffer, op. cit., p. 104.
⁴⁸Ibid., p. 461


18th Century Autobiographies: 1750-1800
¹Frances Anne Vane, "Memoirs of a Lady of Quality," in Tobias Smollett, Peregrine Pickle (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1930; rpt. 1963), 2, 33-143. Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
²Dictionary of National Biography (London: Oxford University Press, 1917; rpt. 1937-38), XX, 112.
³Donald A. Stauffer, The Art of Biography in Eighteenth Century England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 92.
⁴Ibid.
⁵Charlotte Charke (Sacheverel), A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke, Daughter of Colley Cibber (London: Constable & Co. Ltd., 1929). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
⁶We should, however, note that these are books by men who strike a similar pose--her father Colley Cibber, for one. To some extent this narrative stance grows out of a general interest in Don Quixote; this, let us remember, was the literary background against which Sterne was shortly to erupt.
⁷Catherine Yeo Jemmat, The Memoirs of Mrs. Catherine Jemmat, Daughter of the late Admiral Yeo of Plymouth. Written by Herself (London, 1771). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
⁸Margaret Brindley Lucas, An Account of the Convincement and Call to the Ministry of Margaret Lucas, Late of Leek, in Staffordshire (Philadelphia: B. & J. Johnson, 1800). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
⁹Jane Hoskens, The Life and Spiritual Sufferings of that Faithful Servant of Christ, Jane Hoskens (Philadelphia: William Evitt, 1771). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
¹⁰Ann Wall, The Life of Lamenther: A True History Written by Herself in Five Parts (London, 1771). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
¹¹Stauffer, op. cit., pp. 173-74.
¹²Mary Eleanor Lyon Bowes, The Confessions of the Countess of Strathmore; Written by Herself (London: W. Locke, 1793). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
¹³George Anne Bellamy, An Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy, Late of Covent-Garden Theatre. Written by Herself (London: J. Bell, 1785). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
¹⁴Elizabeth Sarah Villa-Real Gooch, The Life of Mrs. Gooch. Written by Herself. Dedicated to the Public (London: C. & G. Kearsley, 1792). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
¹⁵Hester Ann Rogers, An Account of the Experience of Mrs. H. A. Rogers. Written by Herself (London: G. Whitfield, n.d. [1802]). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
¹⁶Frances Henshaw Paxton Dodshon, Some Account of the Convincement and Religious Experience of Frances Dodshon, Late of Macclesfield (Warrington: W. Leicester, 1803). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
¹⁷Catherine Phillips, Memoirs of the Life of Catherine Phillips (London: James Phillips and Son, 1797). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
¹⁸Mary Alexander, Some Account of the Life and Religious Experience of Mary Alexander, Late of Needham Market (Philadelphia: A. Griggs & K. Dickinson, 1815). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
¹⁹Northrop Frye, "Towards Defining and Age of Sensibility," ELH, 23 (1956), 144-52.
²⁰Mary Robinson, Mrs. Mary Robinson: Written by Herself (London: Grolier Society, n.d.). Page numbers cited refer to this edition.
²¹See Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood, trans. Robert Baldick (London: J. Cape, 1962).


Historical Background: The 18th Century
¹Luella M. Wright, The Literary Life of the Early Friends: 1650-1725 (New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1966), p. 4.
²Ibid., p. 1.
³Ibid., p. 11.
⁴James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, ed. George Birkbeck Hill (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1909), I, 535.
⁵Donald A. Stauffer, The Art of Biography in Eighteenth Century England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 260.
⁶Gerald M. Straka, "Sixteen Eighty-eight as the Year One: Eighteenth Century Attitudes Towards the Glorious Revolution," in Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture, vol. I: The Modernity of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Louis T. Milic (Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1971), pp. 145-46.
⁷Quoted in Straka, op. cit., p. 146.
⁸J. H. Plumb, England in the Eighteenth Century (1714-1815) (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1950; rpt. 1964), p. 11.
⁹M. Dorothy George, London Life in the XVIIIth Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925), p. 23.
¹⁰Plumb, op. cit., p. 144.
¹¹Ibid., p. 11.
¹²Dorothy Marshall, Dr. Johnsonıs London (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1968), p. 12.
¹³Plumb, op. cit., p. 78.
¹⁴Ibid., p. 11
¹⁵F. Crouzet, "England and France in the Eighteenth Century: A Comparative Analysis of Two Economic Growths," trans. J. Sondheimer, in The Causes of the Industrial Revolution, ed. R. W. Hartwell (London: Methuen, 1967), p. 143.
¹⁶Marshall, op. cit., p. 24.
¹⁷Plumb, op. cit., p. 11.
¹⁸Ibid., p. 78.
¹⁹Ibid., p. 18.
²⁰Ibid., p. 82.
²¹Ibid., p. 78.
²²Crouzet, op. cit., p. 164.
²³Ibid., p. 162.
²⁴Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (London: Chatto and Windus, Ltd., 1957; rpt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 142-43.
²⁵Plumb, op. cit., p. 31.
²⁶Watt, op. cit., p. 37.
²⁷Plumb, op. cit., p. 30.
²⁸Quoted in Robert Palfrey Utter and Gwendlyn Bridges Needham, Pamelaıs Daughters (New York: MacMillan Company, 1936), p. 31.
²⁹Utter and Needham, op. cit., pp. 21-22.
³⁰Quoted in A. R. Humphreys, "The ŒRights of Womanı in the Age of Reason," MLN, 41 (1946), 261.
³¹Boswell, op. cit., II, 63-64.
³²Ibid., II, 64.
³³Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, I, 11. 289-94, ed. Maynard Mack, in The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope (London: Methuen & Co., 1950), III, 50-51.
³⁴Basil Willey, The Eighteenth Century Background (London: Chatto and Windus, Ltd., 1940; rpt. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pp. 43 ff.
³⁵Ibid., p. 48.
³⁶Soame Jenyns, "A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil," in The Works of Soame Jenyns (London: T. Cadell, 1790), III, 49.
³⁷Pope, op. cit., III, 11. 148-60; 107-9.
³⁸R. S. Crane, "Suggestions toward a Genealogy of the ŒMan of Feelingı," ELH, I (1934), 205 ff.
³⁹George Anne Bellamy, An Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy, Late of Covent-Garden Theatre. Written by Herself (London: J. Bell, 1785), VI, 78.
⁴⁰Elizabeth Sarah Villa-Real Gooch, The Life of Mrs. Gooch. Written by Herself. Dedicated to the Public (London: C & G. Kearsley, 1792), I, 18.
⁴¹John Tinnon Taylor, Early Opposition to the English Novel: The Popular Reaction from 1760-1830 (New York: Kingıs Crown Press, 1943), p. 1.
⁴²Stauffer, op. cit., p. 65.
⁴³Quoted in Humphreys, op. cit., p. 258.
⁴⁴Daniel Defoe, Essay on Projects, quoted in Myra Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England: 1650-1760 (Gloucester, Mass., 1964), p. 311.
⁴⁵Humphreys, op. cit., p. 261.
⁴⁶Jonathan Swift, "Letter to a Very Young Lady on her Marriage," in The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford, 1948), vol. 9, Irish Tracts: 1720-1723 and Sermons, ed. Louis Landa, p. 92.
⁴⁷Quoted in Myra Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England: 1650-1760 (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1964), p. 340.
⁴⁸Quoted in Reynolds, op. cit., p. 320.
⁴⁹Taylor, op. cit., p. 52.
⁵⁰Hester Ann Rogers, An Account of the Experience of Mrs. H. A. Rogers. Written by Herself (London: n.d., G. Whitfield, [1802]).
⁵¹Mary Alexander, Some Account of the Life and Religious Experiences of Mary Alexander, Late of Needham Market (Philadelphia: A. Griggs & K. Dickinson, 1815), p. 16.
⁵²Swift, "On the Education of Ladies," in The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford, 1948), IX, 92.
⁵³Joseph Addison, Spectator 37, ed. Donald F. Bond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965).
⁵⁴John J. Richetti, Popular Fiction Before Richardson: Narrative Patterns 1700-1739 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 125-26.
⁵⁵Quoted in Robert Halsband, The Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), p. 2.
⁵⁶Bellamy, op. cit., I, 117-18.
⁵⁷Catherine Yeo Jemmat, The Memoirs of Mrs. Catherine Jemmat, Daughter of the late Admiral Yeo of Plymouth. Written by Herself (London, 1771), I, 115.
⁵⁸Bellamy, op. cit., IV, 120.
⁵⁹Stauffer, op. cit., p. 131.
⁶⁰Gooch, op. cit., II, 111.
⁶¹Natascha Würzbach, ed., The Novel in Letters (Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1969), pp. xiv-xv.
⁶²Bellamy, op. cit., II, 57-58.
⁶³Mary Granville Pendarves Delany, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, ed. Lady Llanover (London: Richard Bentley, 1860), I, 24.
⁶⁴Ibid., p. 110.
⁶⁵Charlotte Charke (Sacheverel), A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke, Daughter of Colley Cibber (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1929), pp. 17-18.
⁶⁶Utter and Needham, op. cit., pp. 111-12.
⁶⁷Gooch, op. cit., I, 18.


The "Feminine Sensibility" in Early Autobiography
¹Anna Robeson Burr, The Autobiography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909), p. 225.
²Ibid., pp. 225-26.
³Richard Austen Butler, The Difficult Art of Autobiography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 22.
⁴Joyce M. Horner, "The English Women Novelists and their Connection with the Feminist Movement (1688-1797)," Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, 11 (1929), 143.
⁵Donald A. Stauffer, English Autobiography before 1700 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930), p. 209.
⁶Paul Delany, British Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), pp. 158-59.
⁷Ibid., p. 164.
⁸Virginia Woolf, A Room of Oneıs Own (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1929), pp. 132 ff.
⁹Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: Bantam Books, 1970; rev. 1971; rpt. 1972), p. 164.
¹⁰Rarely, however, on the sexual aspects of these relationships. Occasionally men will deal with such matters; but even the raciest accounts of women seldom touch on them. That Fanny Hill could have been written by an eighteenth century English woman is most improbably.
¹¹Lucy Hutchinson, "The Life of Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson," in Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), p. 30.
¹²Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, "The True Relation of my Birth and Breeding," in The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, ed. C. H. Firth (London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd., n.d.), p. 156.
¹³Alice Thornton, The Autobiography of Mrs. Alice Thornton of East Newton, Co. York, ed. Charles Jackson (Edinburgh: Surtees Society, 1875), p. 98.
¹⁴Ibid., p. 126.
¹⁵Hutchinson, op. cit., p. 63.
¹⁶Anne Fanshawe, Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830), p. 46.
¹⁷Mary Penington, Some Experiences in the Life of Mary Penington, ed. Norman Penney (London: Headley Bros., 1911), p. 10.
¹⁸Fanshawe, op. cit., p. 36.
¹⁹Cavendish, op. cit., p. 162.
²⁰Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, Some Specialities in the Life of M. Warwicke, ed. T. C. Croker (London: Percy Society, 1848), p. 4.
²¹Thornton, op. cit., p. 75.
²²Rich, op. cit., p. 11.
²³Kenelm Digby, Loose Fantasies, ed. Vittorio Gabrieli (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1968), p. 38.
²⁴Thomas Raymond, Autobiography, in The Autobiography of Thomas Raymond and Memoirs of the Family of Guise of Elmore, Gloucestershire, ed. G. Davies (London: Camden Society, 1917), p. 31.
²⁵Ibid., pp. 44-45.
²⁶Edward Hyde, The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon (Oxford: University Press, 1857), I, 11-12.
²⁷Ibid., p. 15.
²⁸Ibid.
²⁹John Bramston, The Autobiography of Sir John Bramston, K. B., of Skreens, in the Hundred of Chelmsford (London: Camden Society, 1845), p. 103.
³⁰John Reresby, The Travels and Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, Bart. (London: B. MacMillan, 1813), p. 168.
³¹Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (London: Chatto and Windus, Ltd., 1957; rpt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 144-45.
³²Teresia Constantia Phillips, An Apology for the Conduct of Mrs. T. C. Phillips (London: G. Smith, 1761), iii, 49-50.
³³M. Dorothy George, London Life in the XVIIIth Century, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925), p. 172.
³⁴Edward Gibbon, Gibbonıs Autobiography, ed. M. M. Reese (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), p. 55.
³⁵Quoted in Christopher Hill, "Clarissa Harlowe and her Times," Essays in Criticism, 5 (1955), 322.
³⁶George Anne Bellamy, An Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy, Late of Covent-Garden Theatre. Written by Herself (London: J. Bell, 1785), I, 59.
³⁷Ibid., IV, 118.
³⁸Delariviere Manley, The History of Rivella, in The Novels of Mary Delariviere Manley, ed. Patricia Köster (Gainesville, Florida: Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, 1971; facsimile reproduction of the 1714 edition), p. 748.
³⁹Jonathan Swift, "Letter to a Very Young Lady on her Marriage," The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1948), IX, 88.
⁴⁰Basil Willey, The Seventeenth Century Background, (New York: Anchor Press, 1953; first publ. 1934 ), p. 12.
⁴¹Catherine Yeo Jemmat, The Memoirs of Mrs. Catherine Jemmat, Daughter of the late Admiral Yeo of Plymouth. Written by Herself (London, 1771), II, 56.
⁴²Bellamy, op. cit., I, 192.
⁴³Ibid., II, 203.
⁴⁴Fanny Burneyıs diary, quoted in Donald A. Stauffer, The Art of Biography in Eighteenth Century England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 128.