Aphra Behn: A Secret Life

Aphra Behn: A Secret Life by Janet Todd illuminates the life of a fascinating 17th-century woman

LISA REDMOND

Janet Todd’s masterly biography of the first professional lady of letters has been reissued by Fentum Press 21 years after it originally appeared. In the intervening years Behn has become a regular feature of many English degrees. I asked the author how she feels Aphra Behn’s critical reputation has changed and one of the things Janet Todd is wary of is that on many English courses Behn is often examined without sufficient reference to her cultural and historical context. “She is securely taught in many universities now, in women’s and post-colonial studies and where Restoration literature is a course within an English degree. Only in the last is she put firmly within her historical and literary context. Critical work has tended to concentrate on The Rover and Oroonoko, discussing issues of interest to us now and often finding modern ideas of gender, race and class in her work rather than teasing out her meanings within her historical frame.”

Literary biographies are a fascinating read because they give us a new insight into the author’s works; in this case however Todd uses Behn’s works to open a window onto her life. Documentary evidence for Behn is scant but Todd’s research is painstaking.

Born Aphra Johnson in Kent in 1640, very little is known of her early years but Todd teases out family connections to Thomas Colepeper and through him to Lord Strangford and Lady Sunderland, which may account for Behn’s literary education. Certainly she was fluent in French and well versed in the classics.

She served as a spy for the court of Charles II in the 1660s through her connection to Thomas Killigrew: spy master, theatre manager and dramatist, but Todd is meticulous in putting together the puzzle of Behn’s activities throughout these years. She gives us a clearer picture of an adventurous young woman with an eye for detail and a fascination for learning and culture who had enough daring, wit and courage to take the risks necessary for the life of a spy and of course in pursuit of payment as well as excitement. Behn’s most famous novel and certainly the one that is most popular on undergraduate courses, Oroonko contains such a wealth of detail of the colony of Surinam and its inhabitants that she must have visited. Todd puts together the connections that took her there and the timeline of her travels. Using the settings of her fictional works, Todd is able to piece together an astounding tale of a woman who acted as an English agent in a variety of European cities. However spying was not a lucrative profession and Behn soon fell into debt. She returned to London to petition the King for payment to clear the debts she had incurred in his service but with payment not forthcoming she was arrested and spent time in debtor’s prison.

JANET TODD

Determined to earn her living by her pen, she worked as a scribe for both The King’s Company and The Duke’s Company, she translated works from French and began to write her own poetry, plays and prose. She had a number of her plays performed throughout the 1670s and 1680s including The Forc’d Marriage and The Rover and they helped to cement her reputation as a wit. Behn used her plays as a channel to attack those whose politics she disagreed with, often lampooning public figures, but they also display her interest in women’s lives and the obstacles they face, in love, marriage and the games that men and women play. In the 1680s Behn began to publish prose pieces and Love Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister is one of the earliest novels in English. Behn wrote a great deal of erotic fiction and her open and unembarrassed attitude to sex and the female body made her unpopular in the prudish Victorian era. Her reputation was rebuilt by a number of scholars in the 20^th century and certainly Janet Todd’s is the most detailed and informative biography we have. I asked Todd if she would change anything were she writing the book today.

“I would apologise less for being speculative than I did then. I made it clear where I was speculating and I grounded my theories on what was already known but I would now make more positive claims for what I was doing. Biography-writing has developed in recent years … When revising the book, I wondered about cutting some historical context, but decided against it. Behn’s life is so rich, so multifaceted and embedded in other lives, that I think she needs to live in quite a fat book.”

Aphra Behn is acknowledged as an important part of the Restoration literary scene but Todd believes that her contribution to the creation of the novel is yet to be widely accepted. “I believe she should be held in as much critical esteem as an innovator and pioneer—but there is a long way to go …” but Todd is confident that scholarly study of Behn is improving. “A recent large British grant supporting study by a group of academics on Aphra Behn is likely to produce detailed scholarly work, especially about sources and historical links. This in turn will undoubtedly lead to further and more illuminating critical assessments. But not yet. For the present I must admit that Aphra Behn hasn’t become quite as famous as I expected. Maybe in another 25 years.”

Aphra Behn lived a life as full, as exciting, and in many ways as scandalous as any heroine, and whether you are in search of a biography of a fascinating woman or one of a hugely influential writer or seek a window onto the political, literary and cultural landscape of Restoration England you will find all three in this page-turning book.

This article was first published by the Historical Novel Society

https://historicalnovelsociety.org/aphra-behn-a-secret-life-by-janet-todd-illuminates-the-life-of-a-fascinating-17th-century-woman/

About the contributor: Lisa Redmond is a reviewer for the HNS. She loves to read and write historical fiction and is currently working on her first novel about 17th-century Scottish witches.

Jane Austen; The Legacy of a Lady

The Legacy of A Lady

'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife' Probably the most famous opening line in literature. The author was of course Jane Austen who died on July 18th 1817, so this year marks the two hundredth anniversary of her death. There are countless events being organised across the world to celebrate and remember a writer who is undoubtedly one of the most popular novelists of all time, when it comes to the classics Jane Austen is one of the few who is still regularly read for enjoyment and her stories have helped to create a whole industry; Austen-mania is big business.

I am the first to admit that I am a devoted Janeite and just recently attended a fantastic afternoon organised by Jane Austen Ireland in the splendid Georgian room at the Teacher's Club in Dublin. The event featured the performance of Regency music and singing including some of Jane Austen's own favourite pieces as well as readings from her work, an introduction to regency fashions and regency dancing. It was great fun and a fantastic tribute to the great lady.

The stories and indeed the characters that Jane Austen created are now famous beyond the books; in fact there are many who have never read a Jane Austen novel or sat down to watch an adaptation who nonetheless have an awareness of Mr Darcy of Pemberley or the Bennet sisters of Longbourn. Colin Firth will forever be Mr Darcy for a whole generation of Janeites who were treated to a wealth of adaptations during the mid nineties. 1995 was a bumper year with BBC adaptations of both Pride & Prejudice and Persuasion and the Hollywood treatment for Sense & Sensibility starring Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet.

The nineteen nineties may have seen Austen mania take over our televisions but interest in her stories had been building long before; Pride & Prejudice must be one of the most adapted novels of all time. There was a fantastic black and white film version starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier which appeared in 1940 and there were two TV mini-series in the nineteen fifties as well as countless stage versions. The BBC adapted all the novels into mini-series during the seventies and early eighties. However Jane Austen's stories were notably absent from our screens during the late eighties and early nineties so that a younger generation discovered her anew when the stories were re-imagined from the mid nineties. It was at this point that the popularity of Jane Austen and her stories really took off. These later adaptations played on the broad appeal of Austen's humour and there was an emphasis on detail so that costumes, hair and background were less gawdy and more authentic than the previous adaptations with their polyester gowns and wobbly sets.

I first discovered Jane Austen at school in the early nineties and went on to study her again during my English degree and I loved her narrative style, her wit and the glorious silliness of many of her characters. So having read all of the novels, I was an avid viewer of everything Austen. The late nineties and early noughties saw a huge growth in works; films, books and other formats that were inspired by Austen books rather than direct adaptations, these include the 1995 movie Clueless which is an updated version of Emma set in a Los Angeles high school. Two years later the first of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones books appeared featuring Mark Darcy. These books have gone on to become a huge film franchise in which Colin Firth once again features as Darcy. The following decade saw a number of popular Bollywood versions of the stories; I Have Found It (2000), Bride & Prejudice (2004) and Aisha (2010). Jane Austen is hugely popular in Asia as the recurring themes of arranged marriages, dowries, and inheritance laws which favour sons over daughters are part of everyday life for many in India and Pakistan making the stories both relevant and easy to adapt.

This decade also saw the beginning of the boom in Jane Austen fan fiction both online and in published form. Sequels to Austen's novels and works inspired by her plots or her characters are nothing new Emma Tennant and Joan Aiken both wrote “Austen” novels in the nineteen eighties and nineties and she was a formative influence on popular historical fiction authors throughout the Twentieth century in particular Georgette Heyer and those who imitated her. But after 2000 there was a flood of books based in Austen's world and featuring her characters that range from tales of class and social commentary such as Jo Baker's Longbourn (2013) which retells Pride & Prejudice through the servants eyes to murder mystery in P.D. James Death Comes to Pemberley (2011) to comedy horror with Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009) there are even spin offs which are inspired by the Jane Austen fandom itself Austenland which features an American fan visiting an Austen theme park hit the bestseller lists in 2007 and cinema screens in 2013 and the gloriously funny Lost in Autsen made by ITV in 2008 has a modern London girl do a life swap with Elizabeth Bennet. There are also a growing number of websites and blogs were people can share their own fictional accounts of their favourite Jane Austen characters.

Jane Austen's critical reputation has grown and grown and there have been a number of biographies and re-examinations of her work which have not only established her firmly within the cannon of English Literature but dismissed any earlier notions of cosiness or a conservative or limited world view. These include Jane Austen The Secret Radical by Helena Kelly (2016) The Making of Jane by Devoney Looser (2017) and Paula Byrne's The Genius of Jane Austen (2017). Our obsession with Jane's own story has also been growing with popular films such as Becoming Jane (2007) based on an earlier book which posited the idea of a doomed love affair between Jane and her neighbour's nephew Tom Lefroy both the film and the book seemed to suggest that Lefroy was the inspiration behind Darcy and while that idea was popular with Janeites it was less so with the critics.

Nonethless the productions, books, films, podcasts and theories continue to appear. What is it that draws us to Jane Austen and her world? A nostalgia for a different era certainly, a life of balls and music, dresses and dancing, but I think what really makes us long to be part of that world is the characters. Jane Austen created people that are recognisable and real we can spot ourselves and others amongst her creations and we can laugh at their foibles as she did. Nowadays we can buy Jane Austen mugs and tea towels, take a Jane Austen tour or re-enact a regency dance but I believe Jane Austen's real and lasting legacy is in those carefully drawn characters and her cutting remarks. I would urge anyone who has only ever seen adaptations or updated versions to pick up her books, go back to the source and see what a talented and funny writer she was.

This article originally appeared on the Books Ireland Blog 

https://www.booksirelandmagazine.com/the-legacy-of-a-lady/

Lisa Redmond is a writer and reviewer. She blogs about books, writing and women in history at lisareadsbooks.blogspot.com.

Madwoman in the Attic #8 Anne Burke

Anne Burke was an Irish writer of Gothic novels. She was one of the first women to write in the Gothic genre. Anne Burke was a governess who after she was left widowed with a young son turned to writing to earn money, although she applied on several occasions to the Royal Literary Fund for relief. Anne Burke's books inspired Anne Radcliffe who was one of the most successful of the Gothic novelists. Anne Burke is considered to be part of the group of key Irish authors who popularised and developed the Gothic style of writing in the late Eighteenth Century and afterwards including Regina Maria Roche and Sydney Owenson
List of works
Ela or The Delusions of the Heart 1787
Emilia de St Aubigne 1788
Adela Northington 1796
The Sorrows of Edith 1796
Elliott or Vicissitudes of Early Life 1800
The Secret Of the Cavern 1805

Madwoman in the Attic #7 Elizabeth Dorothea Cobbe

Elizabeth Lady Tuite was born in Dublin in 1764, the daughter of Colonel Thomas Cobbe and Lady Eliza Beresford. She married Sir Henry Tuite the 8th Baronet in November 1784. She was a poet and a writer for children. She was the great aunt of Frances Power Cobbe and was said to have been a great influence on her. Lady Tuite's husband died in 1805 and she spent much of the rest of her life living in Bath. Lady Tuite's poetry was considered to be in the romantic style. She was one of the set who attended the literary salon of Elizabeth Rawdon; Countess of Moira who was also a relative. Her poetry was included in an anthology "What Sappho would have Said " by Emma Donoghue. She died in 1850.
Further information can be found in A Dictionary of British and American Women Writers 1660-1800 by Janet Todd and The Cambridge Companion to women's Writing in the Romantic Period by Devoney Looser. 

Madwoman in the Attic #6 Frances Power Cobbe

Frances Power Cobbe was born on December 4th 1822 at her family's estate at  Newbridge House in North Dublin. Her family were strongly evangelical in their faith but Frances began to question conventional religious belief and after her mother's death in 1847 she stopped attending church services. In 1855 she published Essay on Intuitive Morals setting out her own belief on religion and ethics. This caused a rift with her father and she left home permanently soon after. Frances travelled extensively in the years that followed and published Italics (1864) about her travels in Italy. She became involved with the Ragged Schools movement in Bristol and her time working with poor, sick and unemployed women fueled her interest in women's rights. She wrote a number of pamphlets and essays on women's education and women's suffrage, campaigning for assault to be grounds for separation. She was a leading member of the National Society for Women's Suffrage. In the 1870s she focused mostly on her campaigns against vivisection and was a founding member of both the National Anti-Vivisection Society and the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection.
A regular contributor to a number of magazines and periodicals she also wrote an autobiography published in 1894. Frances lived with her lifelong partner the sculptor Mary Lloyd from 1860 until Lloyd's death in 1896. They are buried together at Llanlltyd in Wales were they lived most of their lives.

Madwoman in the Attic #5 Marguerite Power, Countess of Blessington

Marguerite Power was born at Knockbrit, Clonmel, Co Tipperary in 1789. She was the daughter of Ellen Sheehy and Edmund Power who owned a small amount of land. According to her first biographer her father known as 'Buck' Power was a gambler and drinker and Maguerite had an unhappy childhood as the family were constantly in debt. Her father traded Marguerite in payment for gambling debts to Captain Maurice St Leger Farmer, so at 15 Marguerite went from unhappy child to unhappy bride. Her husband starved, beat and imprisoned his wife. The law at the time would offer her no protection and Marguerite's only option was to separate from her husband. When he was posted to India by the army she refused to go with him and instead  moved to London. She was immediately a cause for scandal as she was a 'separated woman' but still a teenager. However her good looks and sparking wit made her extremely popular as a society hostess. Marguerite began an affair with Charles John Gardiner, First Earl of Blessington while both of them were still married but his wife died in 1814 and Farmer died in debtor's prison in 1817 so the pair married in 1818. Blessington was a wealthy and indulgent husband and Marguerite was generous to a fault insisting on helping out a number of relatives in Ireland and England. In 1822 the Blessingtons set out on a Grand Tour. Marguerite was well known in literary circles and struck up a friendship with Byron at Genoa. She later wrote Conversations with Lord Byron. (1834) At Naples she met Irish writer Richard Robert Madden who later wrote her biography (1855). While they were travelling on the continent John invited the dashing Count D'Orsay who had been part of their London circle to join them. With all of them living together and indulging in a life of extravagance it was probably inevitable that D'Orsay and Marguerite began an affair but with a young and healthy husband Marguerite knew that it could be years before they could be together so she devised a plan. She persuaded her husband to arrange a match between his daughter Harriet from his first marriage to D'Orsay so that they could continue to spend time together without any gossip. Ironically just a few months after the marriage in 1829 Blessington suffered a sudden stroke and died  in Paris. He left Marguerite plenty of money, jewels and estates and she establishment her household back in London persuading D'Orsay and Harriet to live with her, after just three years though Harriet walked out exposing her husband and step mother to scandal. Typically D'Orsay was accepted quickly back into society but Marguerite was not. Marguerite turned to writing to support herself and her literary salons were revived. Her home Gore House is now the site of the Albert Hall and writers who visited her included Charles Dickens and Benjamin Disraeli. Marguerite wrote novels; The Repealers or Grace Cassidy (1834), The Governess (1839),  Strathern (1845), The Fatal Error (1847) and travel books The Idler in France (1839) The Idler in Italy (1841) as well as contributing to newspapers and periodicals, she was one of the first writers to have her work serialised in The Sunday Times. Astute in her own business dealings but not in her private life Marguerite and D'Orsay had to leave London to escape their creditors in 1849. Just a few weeks later Marguerite was dead, like her husband before her she suffered a massive stroke in Paris. She is buried at St Germain. 

Madwomen in the Attic #4 Elizabeth Griffith

Elizabeth Griffith was born in Wales in 1727 to Thomas Griffith a well known Dublin actor-manager and his Yorkshire wife Jane Foxcroft, however she was raised in Ireland and educated by her father. She read both English and French and her father encouraged her to recite verse, no doubt anticipating a life on the stage. Her father died in 1744 and by 1749 Elizabeth is listed as an actress in Thomas Sheridan's company (husband of Frances Sheridan) Sometime in the early 1750s Elizabeth secretly married Richard Griffith and in 1753 they moved to London and she began performing at Covent Garden. When her husband's business failed Elizabeth turned to writing; publishing her courtship letters and following those with poetry and drama. She also translated a number of works from French. She achieved enough success that she could seek employment with the famed David Garrick for whom she wrote The School for Rakes in 1769 and though other plays followed they were less successful. Elizabeth soon turned to novel writing and the fashionable epistolary novel. She toned down her characters in her novels as she received criticism for her forthright female characters in her plays and conscious of the need to provide for her family she tailored her work to the market. She published her first novel in the same year as her husband The Delicate Distress (1769) was followed by The History of Lady Barton (1771) and The Story of Lady Juliana Harley (1776) These novels feature characters who are preyed upon by violent men conforming to the trend for sentimental novels at the time, the tone is quite moralistic and as a consequence her books dated very quickly and rapidly went out of fashion. Griffith however continued what she saw as her more serious work editing works by women dramatists such as Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood and translating French work such as Voltaire and the Princess of Cleeves by Marie-Madeleine, Comtesse de La Fayette. She also wrote Literary Criticism and her The Morality of Shakespeare's Drama Illustrated (1775) is especially significant as she was one of the first scholars to discuss Shakespeare's legacy and importance.

Although she often received a harsh critical reception Elizabeth Griffith was widely respected in the literary circles of her day, her admirers included Fanny Burney, Joshua Reynolds, James Boswell and Edmund Burke. Griffith has often been dismissed as a sentimental novelist but she made a sizeable contribution to the literary world of her day. She was a member of the Blue Stocking Society; an intellectual salon consisting of mostly female members and organised by Elizabeth Montagu.

Elizabeth Griffith is pictured here (seated right) with other Bluestockings in this 1778 painting by Richard Samuel. Elizabeth Griffith's son joined the East India Company and became a wealthy man,  in 1786 Elizabeth and her husband settled at Millicent House at Clane in County Kildare with their son and Elizabeth died there in 1793. 

Madwomen in the Attic #3 Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan)

Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan) was born on December 25th in Dublin in the early 1780s. She was always rather elusive about the exact year of her birth. Her father was actor-manager Robert Mac Owen who changed his name to Owenson. although he was Irish, Owenson spent much of his youth in London and so he met and married an English girl Jane Hill before the two travelled to Dublin to settle permanently. Robert Owenson set up a theatrical company in Dublin and Sydney and her sister Olivia spent a great deal of time there. Sydney was mostly educated at home with her sister, they lived on Dame Street in her early childhood but after her mother's death in 1789 her and her sister were sent to private schools around Dublin and then moved to Sligo were their father was working as an actor. There was some financial problems for the family and when Sydney was in her teens she had to accept work as a governess with the Featherstone family of Bracklyn Castle. Sydney blossomed at this point as she had an opportunity to show off her skills; she could sing, dance and play the harp. It was there that Sydney began to write. She published a volume of poetry and a collection of verses for Irish melodies in the early 1800s. She then decided to write a novel, she was an admirer of Fanny Burney and she published St Clair (1804) and The Novice of St Dominick (1806) with much success. It was her third novel however The Wild Irish Girl (1806)  which made her a household name. This book displayed Sydney's passion for Ireland and her patriotic fervour. She used her celebrity to extoll the virtues of Ireland's traditions and history. The Missionary; An Indian Tale followed and numbered Percy Bysshe Shelley amongst its admirers. She also wrote an opera and some proposals on Women's education. Sydney joined the household of John Hamilton 1st Marquess Abercorn and married the family's surgeon Sir Thomas Charles Morgan in 1812. O'Donnell (1814) is widely considered her best work and was praised by Sir Walter Scott. Books on France and Italy were praised by Byron for their authenticity but harshly reviewed elsewhere. Sydney was adept at capturing the ordinary life of the poor and she returned to examining Irish life with Absenteeism (1825) and The O'Briens and The O'Flahertys(1827).
Sydney was awarded a pension by Lord Melbourne for her services to literature, the first women ever to receive such an award. She again asserted her feminist views in Woman and her Master (1840). She began work on her memoirs with Geraldine Jewsbury but they were unfinished at her death in 1859. In 1839 the Morgan's moved to London and Sydney was buried in Brompton Cemetery.
A prolific writer, as well as novels, poetry and non fiction she produced numerous tracts and pamphlets.
A lively and entertaining member of numerous literary circles she was never afraid to poke fun and many of those who reviewed her harshly were caricatured in her fiction.
There is a bust of Sydney in The Victoria and Albert Museum and there is a plaque on Kildare Street in Dublin marking one of her homes.

Madwomen in the Attic #2 Regina Maria Roche

Regina Maria Roche (née Dalton) was born in Waterford in 1764 before the family moved to Dublin where she grew up. Little is known about her early life other than that she was the daughter of Captain Blundel Dalton and she is quoted as claiming that books were a passion from a young age and that she had begun to write stories as soon as she could hold a pen. Her first two novels were published in her twenties The Vicar of Landsdowne (1789) and The Maid of Hamlet (1793). Her marriage in 1794 to Ambrose Roche led to a move to England and although her previous books had had some success it was the next book that made her a household name. Children of the Abbey a Gothic Romance published in 1796 was an instant hit. The book went through several editions and was translated into French and Spanish. The book appeared at the height of the Gothic novel trend and Roche quickly followed up with Clermont (1798) a novel with a much darker tone and containing all the trappings we have come to associate with Gothic fiction; a mysterious Countess, an attack by ruffians, a gloomy crypt, a forced marriage. Another huge hit Clermont was one of the seven Gothic novels that the heroine of Northanger Abbey Catherine Morland is told to read by Isabella Thorpe. Another novel followed in 1800 The Nocturnal Visit  but after this the Roches suffered serious financial setback as they were cheated out of an inheritance in Ireland by a dishonest solicitor; an unfortunate mirror of events in Children of the Abbey in which siblings Amanda and Oscar Fitzalan are cheated out of their inheritance Dunreath Abbey by a scheming relative. Regina Maria Roche returned to Ireland in the 1820s after her husband's death. She wrote another eleven novels most of them were picturesque tales of the Irish countryside but none of them reached the heights of success of Clermont and Children of the Abbey. She died in 1845 at the age of 81 in relative obscurity but was remembered fondly in a number of obituaries.

Clemont and  Children of the Abbey are available from Valancourt Books.

http://www.valancourtbooks.com/clermont-1798.html

http://www.valancourtbooks.com/the-children-of-the-abbey-1796.html

Madwomen in the Attic #1 Frances Sheridan

Most of what we know about the early life of  Frances Sheridan (née Chamberlaine) comes from Memoirs of the Life and writings of Mrs Frances Sheridan which was written by her granddaughter Alicia LeFanu and published in 1824. Frances was born in Dublin in 1724, her mother died when she was a baby and she was raised by her father; an Anglican minister under a strict and repressive regime. Her father did not believe in educating girls, but luckily Frances had some liberal minded brothers who taught her Latin, Botany and Literature and by her mid teens Frances had begun writing fiction herself, 'Eugenia and Adelaide' was written on paper stolen from the housekeeper's account books. Frances also attended the theatre with her brothers and it was there that she met actor and manager of the Smock-Alley theatre Thomas Sheridan. They married in 1747. Soon she was writing plays of her own. Marriage to Thomas brought Frances into literary circles including Dr Johnson, Sarah Fielding and Samuel Richardson whom Frances greatly admired and they became good friends. Frances showed him the manuscript of 'Eugenia and Adelaide'  he encouraged her to seek publication and although it was rejected Frances continued to write. During the 1750s Frances gave birth to six children and grew increasingly frail while her husband's theatre suffered terrible financial blows and eventually failed,  they were left with an enormous debt and Thomas sought work in London, money was still incredibly tight and Frances hoped that Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph would help to support the family financially. Published in 1761 Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph was a huge success, praised by the critics and soon after it was translated into French and German. Frances followed the success of her novel with a play The Discovery staged at Drury Lane, starring her husband and David Garrick but financial problems dogged them and they fled their creditors settling in Blois in France were Frances wrote A Trip to Bath and Nourjahad the first of a planned series. The Sheridans were planning to return to Ireland  in 1766 when Frances became suddenly ill and died, aged just 42. The two completed novels were published posthumously the following year. Frances' son Richard Brinsley Sheridan became a celebrated playwright but a careful study of his work and his mother's will show that he was not only inspired by her but in some cases transposed ideas and characters unchanged from her work. There were other writers in the family; daughters Elizabeth and Alicia, granddaughter Alicia and of course great-grandson Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu the popular Victorian gothic novelist. Frances was both critically acclaimed and and a popular bestseller in her day and her books were a huge influence on the generation that followed; including Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen but as fashions in fiction changed as the 19th Century approached her work fell into obscurity.



Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph is published by Oxford Classics.

Find out more about Frances and many other forgotten women writers in Mothers of the Novel by Dale Spender.

Picture credit National Library of Ireland