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 2008. For more information on Orlando visit http://www.cambridge.org/online/orlandoonline
New Author Entries
- Margaret Roper, 1505-44, Renaissance letter-writer and translator of Erasmus, still chiefly famous for her behaviour at her father’s martyrdom
- Anna Hume, fl. 1639-65, Scottish translator of Petrarch
- Mary Latter, 1722-77, miscellaneous writer, author of an unacted tragedy and of combative satire in an ingenious variety of forms
- Charlotte McCarthy, fl. 1745-68, Irish author of a prose romance, poetry, and political and theological works
- Susanna Blamire, 1747-94, poet who wrote in English, Scots, and in Cumberland dialect
- Alethea Lewis, 1749-1827, didactic novelist with a strain of creative unconventionality. She also published essays
- Frances Jacson, 1754-1842, novelist of women’s circumstances and feelings, author of a lost diary
- Maria Elizabetha Jacson, 1755-1829, writer on the science of botany and on gardening
- Anna Margaretta Larpent, 1758-1832, diarist and cultural commentator, unofficial assistant to her husband in his post as Licenser of Plays
- Leah Sumbel, 1762-1829, (who changed her name from Mary Wells on her somewhat short-lived conversion to Judaism), actress, journalist, stage writer, and memoirist
- Eliza Kirkham Mathews, 1772-1802, author of poetry, two novels (other novels generally listed as hers are by Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins), and little books for children
- Adelaide O’Keeffe, 1776-1865, Irish writer famous for verse for children but less known for her remarkable historical novels and biblical paraphrases. In indigent old age she told the Royal Literary Society that its approach to funding authors was all wrong
- Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, 1778-1856, autobiographer and writer on aesthetic theory and theology. As a child she wrote fake Elizabethan texts and buried them for future ages to discover
- Jane Williams, 1806-85, activist on behalf of Welsh culture, who published history, biography, and political argument, as well as a biographical dictionary of literary women
- Georgiana Fullerton, 1812-85, one of the leading Roman Catholic novelists of the nineteenth century
- Frances Browne, 1816-79, blind writer from Ireland, author of poems and fiction, best-known for her fairy-tale collection Granny’s Wonderful Chair
- Mary Ann Shadd Cary, 1823-93, mixed-race American writer and activist for emancipation and women’s rights, who spent years in Canada and was the first woman to edit a newspaper there
- Annie Louisa Walker, 1836-1907, miscellaneous writer, whose poetry and first novel interestingly reflect for English readers her youthful years in Canada
- Rosa Nouchette Carey, 1840-1909, popular domestic and young people’s novelist, proponent of meaningful work for women
- Evelyn Underhill, 1875-1941, mystic and writer on mysticism, who also produced novels, short stories, poetry, and biography
- Mary Agnes Hamilton, 1882-1966, left-wing politician and author of novels, biography, memoirs, and political analysis
- Lady Cynthia Asquith, 1887-1960, diarist (of World War I), autobiographer, and miscellaneous writer
- Ella K. Maillart, 1903-97, Swiss traveller, travel-writer, journalist, memoirist, and photographer, who wrote her later works in English
- Julia O’Faolain, born 1932, Irish novelist and short-story writer, whose fiction often depicts the contact zone between different cultures, and whose non-fiction includes women’s history
- Julia Kristeva, born 1941, French theorist of semiotics, psychoanalysis, and the relations between literature and visual art. She has recently become a novelist and biographer
Other Additions
80 new free-standing chronology entries
153 existing author entries were also updated or enhanced. 62 free-standing chronology entries were also updated or enhanced
Summary of Content
25 entries (20 British women writers, 5 other women writers – listed twice if their nationality shifted); 80 free-standing chronology entries; 650 bibliographical listings; 51,468 tags; 181,984 words (exclusive of tags).