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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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Listings for Author:  

Charlotte Smith

 

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Charlotte Smith : [novels]

'Austen read especially novels by women, including Mary Brunton, Frances and Sarah Harriet Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte Lennox, Lady Morgan, Ann Radcliffe, Regina Maria Roche, Charlotte Smith, Jane West, Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins and Hannah More. She also, apparently, read the fiction of the Lady's Magazine, deriving names, Willoughby, Brandon, Knightley, from it, but correcting its "monological" discourse'.

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen      Print: Book

  

Charlotte Smith : [sonnets (two)]

'On the rear flyleaf of his copy of [Charlotte Smith's] Elegiac Sonnets [5th edn, 1789]... W[ordsworth] copied two more of Smith's compositions, both of which were first published in her novel, Celestina (1791), and reprinted as XLIX and LI in Elegiac Sonnets (6th edn, 1792) ... W[ordsworth]'s copies vary from both texts as published.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth      Manuscript: Unknown

  

Charlotte Smith : Elegiac Sonnets

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, 24 December 1802: 'William is now sitting by me, at 1/2 past 10 o'clock. I have been beside him ever since tea ... My beloved William is turning over the leaves of Charlotte Smith's sonnets ...'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth      Print: Book

  

Charlotte Smith : Emmeline

" Finished reading that Emmeline, a Trumpery novel in four volumes. If I can answer for myself I will never again undertake such a tiresome nonsensical piece of business."

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Eleanor Butler      Print: Book

  

Charlotte Smith : The Old Manor House

?The transition from the vapid sentimentality of the novel of fifty years ago to the goblin horrors of the last twenty is so strong that it almost puzzles us to find a connecting link? Perhaps Charlotte Smith?s novels might have been the connecting link between these different species. ?The Old Manor House has really a great deal to answer for? Her heroines have all the requisites of persecuted innocence? The rage for lumbering ruins, for mildewed manuscripts.?

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Maturin      Print: Book

  

Charlotte Smith : Minor Morals: interspersed with sketches of National history and historical anecdotes and original stories

?Have you seen Minor Morals by Mrs Smith ? There is in it a beautiful botanical poem called ?Calendar of Flora?.?

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Maria Edgeworth      Print: Book

  

Charlotte Smith : Desmond

'With a fine imagination and command of Language Charlotte Smith cannot write without Interest [.] this is an odd work. She introduces in a prettily wrought novel the more early French troubles in consequence of the Revolution, she is a wild leveller. She defends the revolution, she writes with the enthusiasm of a woman and a poetess. Her story is hurried [,] has faults in the conduct and narrative, yet it interests. Her descriptions are very pleasing and her characteristic conversations are somewhat forced. She writes herself out. yet her genius predominates.' [opinion of "Desmond", entered in diary].

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Larpent      Print: Book

  

Charlotte Smith : Letters of a Solitary Wanderer

'In 1816, left alone in Bath by her husband, Mary Shelley records reading "The Solitary Wanderer", Charlotte Smith's "Letters of a Solitary Wanderer" (1799), a collection of interlocking tales in which a number of suffering women relate their stories. It is the single occasion her comprehensive reading diary mentions this book, which she seems to choose at this point to express a resentful, self-pitying protest against her desertion.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley      Print: Book

  

Charlotte Smith : Emmeline

'[Pennington] emphasises... that she "highly disapproved" the novels of Charlotte Smith, believing their morality "very defective" if not "positively bad" (Memoirs, p. 299). Carter's letters however show enthusiasm at least for "Emmeline", and deep sympathy for Smith's domestic situation: she tries hard to be fair even to the "democratic" Desmond, suggesting its critics are "perhaps prejudiced against it", while she has found the included poems "very beautiful" (Letters... to Mrs Montagu, vol III, 295-333)'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter      Print: Book

  

Charlotte Smith : Desmond

'[Pennington] emphasises... that she "highly disapproved" the novels of Charlotte Smith, believing their morality "very defective" if not "positively bad" (Memoirs, p. 299). Carter's letters however show enthusiasm at least for "Emmeline", and deep sympathy for Smith's domestic situation: she tries hard to be fair even to the "democratic" Desmond, suggesting its critics are "perhaps prejudiced against it", while she has found the included poems "very beautiful" (Letters... to Mrs Montagu, vol III, 295-333)'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter      Print: Book

  

Charlotte Smith : Celestina

'Tuesday the 4th being a very wet day we were obliged to keep pretty close to our miserably dull apartments the walls of w'ch were about a yard thick & the windows very small. We however at the library (consisting of about 400 volumes) got Mrs Smiths [sic] novel of "Celestina" & "Humphrey Clinker" to amuse us.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh, Elizabeth Marsh and Miss White     Print: Book

  

Charlotte Smith : The Young Philosopher

'Having finish'd my business in this neighbourhood, I on the next day (Friday the 24th) return'd to London in the coach, in w'ch being alone great part of the way I finished the novel of the "Young Philosopher" & in the evening began that of "Ned Evans" which I sat and read at the Bolt and Tunn, where I found the principal topic of conversation in the coffee room was Sheridan's new play of Pizarro, w'ch came out that evening at Drury Lane.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh      Print: Book

  

Charlotte Smith : Evening

'Evening by Charlotte Smith Oh soothing hour, when glowing Day, ...'

Unknown
Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux     

  

Charlotte Smith : Letters of a Solitary Wanderer

'in the evening walk out - read the Solitary wanderer'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin      Print: Book

  

Charlotte Smith : Emmeline, or the Orphan of the Castle

'Return to Este. read Mrs C. Smiths novel of Emmeline'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley      Print: Book

  

Charlotte Smith : Emmeline, or the Orphan of the Castle

'Finish Emmeline - S. reads Joseph Andrews'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley      Print: Book

  

Charlotte Smith : 

John Wilson Croker to Mr C. Phillips, 3 January 1854: 'As to my novel reading I confess that in my younger days I used to read them all from Charlotte Smith to Maria Edgeworth; Scott I have by heart; but I so far differ from you about Hook's that I date my later indifference to novels from my disappointment at his.'

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker      Print: Book

  

Charlotte Smith : Desmond

Thursday, 16 March 1826: 'In the evening after dinner read Mrs. Charlotte Smith's novel Desmond, decidedly the worst of her compositions.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott      Print: Book

 

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