|
Corvey 'Adopt an Author' Lady Morgan, Sydney Owenson |
The Corvey Project at Sheffield Hallam University |
CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL RECEPTION
ST. CLAIR; OR THE HEIRESS OF DESMOND (1803) by Sydney Owenson.
A review of Sydney Owenson’s novel appeared in the Monthly Review or Literary Journal, as article VI in volume XLIII, shortly after its publication in 1803. The name of the critic is not given. The review begins by giving a succinct synopsis of the novel and then goes on to recite extracts, selected ‘from a regard to brevity rather than to superior merit’. The reviewer remarks that the text contains ‘trifling defects’ in regard to Rousseau’s and Goethe’s ‘talents and styles’. He criticises the novel for exhibiting signs of ‘haste and negligence’ in the composition and claims that her usage of classical and academic ‘allusions’ deviate from the general language and feeling of passion which permeates the text, thus not serving the purpose they are intended for adequately. The critic does, however, give her credit for demonstrating a ‘charm of animated and glowing diction’ but feels these are needlessly interrupted by ‘verses not worthy of publication’, with reference to Owenson’s poetry. The critic talks of the book in terms of ‘dangerous’. He fears the more moralistic reader will disapprove of the ‘dangerous effects’ of the book and talks of ‘the danger of allowing sentiment to gain the ascendancy over reason’. Alicia Lefanu also feels this sense of danger. In a letter from Owenson to Mrs Lefanu, dated January 12th, 1803, she writes ‘I cannot conceive how you can think my hero and heroine dangerous’ (M, I: 203). Lefanu certainly valued the book, however, as in the same letter there is an allusion to her reading it three times. The critic for the Monthly Review or Literary Journal views the main characters in a more genial light and ends his critique, confidant that ‘children of unsophisticated virtue will doubtless close the eventful recital with confirmed resolutions of guarding against the seducing influence of romantic sensibility, while they drop a tear over its ruined but amiable victims.
Owenson’s novel was also reviewed in the Monthly Mirror. It is evident the critic assumed Owenson to be male, possibly being misled by her Christian name, as it is critiqued seriously. The author is credited as being ‘a man of distinguished abilities’ who ‘affords on the whole a most useful lesson’. The ‘sentiments’ of the novel seem to cause him slight confusion and possibly conflict with his ideas of the usual material of ‘male’ authors, as he writes; ‘its sentiments may perhaps be justly considered as exceptional …’(Campbell, 1988: 49).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Campbell, Mary, 1988, Lady Morgan The Life and Times of Sydney Owenson, London, Pandora Press.
Hepworth Dixon, W, (ed), 1863, Lady Morgan’s Memoirs, Vol. I, Leipzig, Bernard Tauchnitz.
1804, Monthly Review or Literary Journal, Vol. XLIII, London.
