By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
1. A novel written by Victorian author Wilkie Collins when he was 20, titled Iolani and set in Tahiti, was eventually published in 1999.
Written in 1844 but not published until 110 years after his death, Iolani: Or, Tahiti as It Was was Collins’s first ever attempt at writing a novel. Collins knew next to nothing about Tahiti, but that didn’t stop him from having a go at writing about it.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘George’ was the pseudonym of choice for nineteenth-century women writers: George Eliot (Marian Evans), George Egerton (Mary Chavelita Dunne). But these women were following an unconventional French writer in choosing to Georgify themselves for publication. In this post, we offer a very short biography of George Sand (1804-76), focusing on the most fascinating aspects of her life.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Isabella Whitney is not a familiar name to many readers of poetry, and in many ways this is hardly surprising. But here at Interesting Literature we like to keep one eye out for the curious but overlooked, the obscure but interesting – and the life and work of Isabella Whitney fit the bill, we’d say. In this post we offer a very brief biography of one of the first English female poets.
That said, writing such a biography of someone like Isabella Whitney might be easier said than done, for very little is actually known about her life. We don’t even know when she was born or when she died. She is said to have ‘flourished’ (the ‘fl.’ abbreviation, standing for ‘floruit’ – Latin for ‘he or she flourished’ – is how her dates are usually rendered in biographical sketches of her) in the years 1567-73. Michael Schmidt’s indispensable Lives Of The Poets
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Although only a small amount of her poetry has survived, the ancient Greek poet Sappho (c. 630 – c. 570 BC) has had a posthumous literary reputation. She has become an icon for lyric poets, and, of course, a symbol for homosexual love between women.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
1. His first book was a guide for apprentices.
The Apprentice’s Vade Mecum appeared in 1733 and offered advice for young apprentices of all trades, especially when it came to things like drinking and ‘wenching’. (Well, we all need a little guidance over such things…)
2. Samuel Richardson’s first novel, Pamela, began life as a conduct-book designed to teach young women how to write better letters.
However, what began as a series of loosely related letters quickly began to coalesce into a clear narrative, and Pamela (subtitled Virtue Rewarded) was born. This 1740 novel tells the story of the titular character, a teenage servant-girl whose rakish master tries to seduce her. However, Pamela refuses to give herself to her boss unless he marries her first, which he does indeed end up doing – her ‘virtue’ is ‘rewarded’.