The scandalous memoirists : Constantia Phillips and Laetitia Pilkington and the shame of "publick fame" / Lynda M. Thompson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thompson, Lynda M.

Contributor:

Penn Sexuality Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Muilman, Teresia Constantia, 1709-1765.

Muilman, Teresia Constantia.

Pilkington, Laetitia, 1712-1750.

Pilkington, Laetitia.

English prose literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

English prose literature.

Great Britain--Social life and customs--18th century--Historiography.

Great Britain.

English prose literature--18th century--History and criticism.

Women and literature--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Women and literature.

Women authors, English--Biography--History and criticism.

Women authors, English.

Scandals--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Scandals.

Autobiography--Women authors.

Autobiography.

English prose literature--Women authors.

Manners and customs--Historiography.

Women authors, English--Biography.

Genre:

Biography.

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 243 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Manchester, UK ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York : Distributed exclusively in the USA by St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Summary:

"This reappraisal of the 'scandalous memoirists' Constantia Phillips and Laetitia Pilkington, who feature with a cast of other eighteenth-century apologists, overturns scholarship's traditional discrediting of them. Their reputations of immorality led them to be despised and disbelieved. However their experiences and revelations concerning the law, marriage, divorce, debt, sexual mores and women's attempts to by-pass patriarchal prescription, make a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the period." "Their life-writing enlivens and enriches eighteenth-century studies. While the memoirists point to the severe restrictions on women writers 'going public', they also demonstrate their skill in circumventing these, adopting strategies which continue to have relevance for writers today."--Jacket.

Contents:

Constantia Phillips's lack of 'a Woman's natural Timidity'

'Her Appearance lately as a Writer'

A 'thousand concurring unhappy Circumstances'

'Your unwarranted Friendship and Fondness for Mr Grimes'

His Principles 'veer round to every Point of the political Compass'

'Disadvantaged by her Sex'

'How vilely can a smooth Tongue polish over the ugly Countenance of Vice'

'Unlamented by a single Person'

'I have a Right to choose the Weapons: a Pen is mine': writing and wit as weaponry in Laetitia Pilkington's Memoirs

'Seeing the World from the Palace to the Prison'

'Wit in Woman is apt to have bad Consequences'

'Mayhap they will meet their Match'

Raided rather than read

'I shall never live to see this Volume published'

The Property of the 'Scandalous memoirs': 'Romance', 'scurrilous Libel' or 'strict Adherence to Truth'?

The writer's relationship to text in the eighteenth century

Unstable genre boundaries

Autobiography, originality and the author as proprietor

'She is not allowed to plead the frailty of human nature': confessions of 'Frailty'

'After this tender, dangerous Commerce, Charlot found everything insipid'

'This Gentleman had always been remarkably fond of green Fruit'

'Women then are Children of a larger growth'

'The Author of those Memoris ... long stigmatised as an incorrigible Prostitute'

Learning the hard way: Mary Wollstonecraft's carefully crafted confessions.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 228-238) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Thompson, Lynda M. Scandalous memoirists.

ISBN:

0719055733

9780719055737

OCLC:

43427898

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description