| This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. The introductory post is here. My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. Spoilers abound in my discussion of these forgotten novels, and I discuss 18th-century attitudes which I do not necessarily endorse. |
CMP#221 Who Wrote the 1807 Novel Griffith Abbey?
The novel was republished in the US in 1808, probably pirated. I've been doing a deep dive on the works of a forgotten female author of Austen's time, Eliza Kirkham Mathews (EKM) (1772-1802), trying to confirm or disprove her authorship of novels published from her teenage years to years after her death. Recently, I gave a synopsis of the 1807 novel Griffith Abbey, a domestic-sentimental-historical novel with some Gothic touches. The author is given as "Mrs. C. Mathews." Scholars have differed in their attributions. Does "Mrs. C. Mathews" refer to EKM, the wife of Charles Mathews, or is it "Mrs. Charlotte Mathews," an authoress who published two novels before 1800?
To answer this question, I tried an approach which so far as I can tell hasn't been tried before--I actually read Griffith Abbey. I wanted to see if it resembles EKM's style in What Has Been, (a novel she undoubtedly wrote) or does it more closely resemble the style of Mrs. Charlotte Mathews, authoress of the 1794 novel Simple Facts, or, The History of an Orphan?
There are many similarities between these two authoresses--both the Mrs. Mathews tended to move their stories along at a brisk pace, unlike, say, Charlotte Smith or Mary Meeke, two popular writers who could turn out novels of four or five volumes. Both featured heroines who are orphaned and end up marrying their childhood sweethearts. But there are many such similarities between all novels of this era. You can scarcely ever find a heroine with two living parents. These stories all feature the travails of unimpeachably virtuous heroines, they stress Christian morality and they use the same narrative tics and plot points...
To answer this question, I tried an approach which so far as I can tell hasn't been tried before--I actually read Griffith Abbey. I wanted to see if it resembles EKM's style in What Has Been, (a novel she undoubtedly wrote) or does it more closely resemble the style of Mrs. Charlotte Mathews, authoress of the 1794 novel Simple Facts, or, The History of an Orphan?
There are many similarities between these two authoresses--both the Mrs. Mathews tended to move their stories along at a brisk pace, unlike, say, Charlotte Smith or Mary Meeke, two popular writers who could turn out novels of four or five volumes. Both featured heroines who are orphaned and end up marrying their childhood sweethearts. But there are many such similarities between all novels of this era. You can scarcely ever find a heroine with two living parents. These stories all feature the travails of unimpeachably virtuous heroines, they stress Christian morality and they use the same narrative tics and plot points...
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