Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present is an on-line cultural history generated from the lives and works of women writers. The materials listed below were added to Orlando in January 2007. For more information on Orlando visit http://www.cambridge.org/online/orlandoonline
New Author Entries
- Anne Locke, c. 1533 – maybe c. 1593, probable author of earliest sonnet sequence in English
- Elizabeth Moody, perhaps early 1740s – 1814, poet and early periodical reviewer
- Henrietta Maria Bowdler, 1750 – 1830, the true inventor of bowdlerising Shakespeare
- Anne Grant, 1755 – 1838, Scottish woman of letters, huge networker, author of book on colonial New York province
- Selina Bunbury, 1802 – 82, whose “writings display a loving and respectful preoccupation with female characters and themes”
- Fanny Fern, 1811 – 72, one of the most popular US writers of the nineteenth century
- Sarah Tytler, 1827 – 1914, prolific Scottish author of domestic and often historical novels
- Isabella Bird, 1831 – 1904, prominent late-Victorian travel writer
- Kate Chopin, 1850 – 1904, US feminist writer particularly well-known for The Awakening
- John Strange Winter, 1856 – 1911, popular for her military novels, unusual for a woman
- Katharine Tynan, 1859 – 1931, leading figure in the Irish Literary Revival
- George Paston, 1860 – 1936, feminist novelist and playwright, biographer, and writer on women’s literary history
- Victoria Cross, 1868 – 1952, whose writing rebels against the sexual and other conventions of her own day, yet has remained unfashionable in later generations
- Eleanor Rathbone, 1872 – 1946, conservative feminist, crucial proponent of family allowances, described as one of the leading politicians of the early twentieth century
- Enid Bagnold, 1889 – 1981, novelist and playwright
- Willa Muir, 1890 – 1970, Scottish writer and translator (most famously of Kafka), overshadowed by her poet husband
- Mary Butts, 1890 – 1937, modernist novelist, poet, and autobiographer
- Muriel Box, 1905 – 91, playwright, film-writer, first British woman film director, and author of a feminist post-nuclear science fiction
- Una Marson, 1905 – 65, Jamaican woman of letters and publicist in Britain of Caribbean culture, early proponent of global feminism and black female identity
- Jean Plaidy, 1906 – 93, immensely popular author of over 200 novels under seven pseudonyms, best-known for historical romance
- Mollie Panter-Downes, 1906 – 97, author of a novel which has been called one of the best in the twentieth century
- Marghanita Laski, 1915 – 88, woman of letters and public intellectual
- Penelope Mortimer, 1918 – 99, novelist and writer in many genres
- Elizabeth Jane Howard, born 1923, best-known as a novelist and autobiographer
- Ann Jellicoe, born 1927, innovative playwright and pioneer of huge-cast community theatre
- Nawal El Saadawi, born 1931, Egyptian feminist writer and voice for Islamic women
- Antonia Fraser, born 1932, historical biographer (particularly of women) and detective-story writer
- Rose Tremain, born 1943, novelist
- Anne Devlin, born 1951, Belfast-born playwright
New Life Screens
- Margaret Tyler, first woman in England to publish a romance and the first English translator direct from Spanish romance, in the later sixteenth century
- Jane Owen, Roman Catholic religious writer of the seventeenth century
- Lady Margaret Cunningham, remarkable early seventeenth-century Scottish autobiographer and religious writer
- Mary Fage, earlier seventeenth-century author of anagrams and acrostics on the names of the British establishment
- Judith Man, who in 1640 translated, abridged, and published her version of a popular Latin heroic romance
- Elizabeth Avery, religious polemicist and autobiographer of the mid-seventeenth century
- Susanna Parr, mid-seventeenth-century religious apologist and polemicist
- Frances Boothby, the sole woman to have a play produced in a public theatre before Aphra Behn
- Elizabeth Tipper, late-seventeenth-century poet and journalist
- Sarah Davy, later-seventeenth-century Independent or Baptist autobiographer
- Barbara Blaugdone, later seventeenth-century Quaker minister and autobiographer
- Sarah Butler, Irish writer who produced, in the early eighteenth century, tales from legendary national history under the guise of fiction
- Ann Cook, mid-eighteenth-century author of an imaginative cookery-book which includes poetry, and story-telling
- Marianne Chambers, late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century novelist and dramatist
- Mrs. F. C. Patrick, Irish novelist of the 1790s
- Anne Burke, successful novelist who began publishing at the end of the eighteenth century
- Frances O’Neill, Irish poet of the later eighteenth and very early nineteenth century
- Charlotte Nooth, author during the early nineteenth century of poetry, a remarkable novel, and a translation of a text against racial prejudice
Other Additions
214 new free-standing chronology entries on such contextual matters as:
- the Iliad
- the Olympic Games
- the British national postal service
- bank notes
- the appointment of Maria Gaetana Agnesi as professor of mathematics in 1750
- street lighting
- Madame Tussaud’s
- Reuter’s news service
- the coinage of the word “allergy”
- Grace Annie Lockhart’s attainment of the first university degree by a woman in the British Empire
- Annie Jump Cannon’s receipt of the first honorary doctorate by a woman from Oxford University
- the British Socialist Party
- the Greenham Common women’s peace camp
- the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Shirin Ebadi of Iran
138 existing author entries were also updated or enhanced. 143 free-standing chronology entries were also updated or enhanced.
Summary of Content
29 entries (26 British women writers, 3 other women writers – listed twice if their nationality shifted); 18 life screens; 198 free-standing chronology entries; 821 bibliographical listings; 83,282 tags; 289,619 words (exclusive of tags)