A Glance At The Rise Of Women Novelists

Women have contributed a lot to the world of Literature. Among them are few who have brought special focus on to writing novels and have became first woman novelists.

The rise of women novelist started with Mrs. Aphra Behn. She is the earliest English women to write fiction. She lived in India during her earlier days and later on stayed at Antwerp, before she settled in England. She is noteworthy for the use of everyday facts and experience of people she made in her books. Her major works are Oroonoko ans The Fair Jilt.

Immediate successors to Mrs Behn were Mrs Manley and Mrs Haywood. New Atlantis In 1709 of Mrs. Manley and Utopian Memoirs of Mrs Haywood were popular at those times. These two ladies were prolific writers, and Mrs Haywood dealt largely with the short storis. Henry Fielding’s sister, Miss fielding in 1744 also wrote a novel David Simple.

In 1761 Memoirs Of Miss Sidney Biddulph by Frances Sheridan was published. Then towards the close of that age, came yet another great promising sign in the form of Mrs Radcliffe.

Hannah More lived from 1745 – 1833. Her work Celebs In Search Of A Wife was brought out in 1809. Fanny Burney (1752-1840) became famous for her work Evelina or The History Of A Young Lady’s Entrance Into The World. The book beautifully portrays the manners of that time, from a woman’s point of view. In 1782, Cecilia or The Memoirs Of An Heiress, in 1796 Camilla and in 1814 The Wanderer are her other works.

Maria Edge Worth was a prolific writer on educational matters and published The Parent’s Assistant in six volumes during 1800. Her first novel was written before she was twenty, though it did not appear till 1814, under the title of Patronage. In 1800 the famous Castle Rackrent was published and Belinda a year later.

Susan Ferrier (1782-1854), she wrote only three novels namely Marriage in 1818, The Inheritance in 1824 and Destiny in 1831.

Miss Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855), the only work with which she is know is Our Village, published around 1824-1832, It portrays a series of charming sketches of rural life. Living through the revival of Romanticism, she by temperament and method belongs to the late 18th century, to the school of manners of which Fanny Burney was a pioneer and Jane Austen the mistress the craftswoman.

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Jane Austen (1775-1817) a born story teller has five novels to her credit. Pride and Prejudice 1796-97, Northanger Abbey 1798, Sense and Sensibility 1797, Mansfield Park 1814, Emma 1816 and Persuation  written in 1816, but was not published until after her death. Another novel Lady Susan was not published as well and The Watsons she left unfinished.

Published earlier here.

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