Adopt an Author

Secondary Reading List on

Elizabeth Helme

By Sharon Watson, May 1998

PRIMARY SOURCES

Helme, Elizabeth. Louisa; or, The Cottage on the Moor 2 vols. Leipzig, Graef, 1789

---. The Pilgrim of the Cross; or, The Chronicles of Christabelle de Mowbray. 4 vols. Brentford: Norbury, 1805

Letters

Royal Literary Fund Archives:

File 97 Elizabeth Helme

File 295 William Helme

File 115 Elizabeth Somerville

includes all correspondence to the fund by members of the Helme family, 1801-1847.

Periodicals

Unless otherwise stated, the edition of the periodical that was used for this study was the bound volume of the original or a microfilm copy.

On Pilgrim of the Cross:

Annual Review 4 (1805): 655.

British Critic 26 (1805): 671.

Critical Review (1806): 215.

Lady's Monthly Museum 16 (1806): 128.

Literary Journal 5 (1805): 1222.

Monthly Magazine and British Register 15-17 (1803-4): 666.

Monthly Mirror 22 (1806): 329.

Monthly Review 51-4 (1806-7): 207.

New Monthly Magazine (1815).

 

On Instructive Rambles:

British Critic 11 (1798): 184.

Critical Review or Annals of Literature 25 (1799): 108-9.

 

On St. Clair of the Isles:

Monthly Magazine 17 (1804): 666.

On James Manners:

Monthly Mirror 8 (1799): 223.

 

SECONDARY SOURCES

Bibliographies

Alston, R. C. 1990. A Checklist of Women Writers, 1801-1900: Fiction, Verse, Drama. London, British Library.

Lists Helme's publications giving each a classification.

London Catalogue of Books. 1814-1846. London: Thomas Hodson.

Lists Helme's publications

London Catalogue of Books. 1816-5. London: Thomas Hodson.

Spender, Dale. 1986. Mothers of the Novel. London: Pandora.

Lists some of Helme's texts.

Summers, Montague. 1964. A Gothic Bibliography. New York: Russell & Russell.

Lists Elizabeth Helme and her daughter Elizabeth's novels

The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. 1969-77. 5 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ward, William S. 1972. Literary Reviews in British Periodicals 1798-1820: A Bibliography. 2 vols. London: Garland

Very useful for lists of periodical reviews on Helme.

Wolff, Robert Ice. 1981. Nineteenth Century Fiction: A Bibliographical Catalogue Based on the Collection formed by Robert Lee Wollf. 5 vols. London: Garland.

Brief reference to Helme's texts, provides further references

Biographical Dictionaries

Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy. 1990. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. Batsford.

Gives a brief biographical sketch of Elizabeth Helme and includes a list of several of her publications.

Gothic Writing

Summers, Montague. 1968. The Gothic Quest. The Fortune Press.

Very critical view of her work

Women's Writing

Copeland, Edward. 1974. Women Writing about Money: Women's Fiction in England 1790-1820. Cambridge University Press.

Looks at Minerva novelists, referring to Helme as one of these)

Turner, Cheryl. 1992. Living by the Pen: Women Writers in the Eighteenth Century. London: Routledge.

Reference to Helme in section entitled 'Didactic Material and The Children's Market' in addition to its general critical analysis of writers of this period

TERTIARY SOURCES

Biographical Dictionaries

Alibone, S Austin. 1885. A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British American Authors Living and Deceased, From Earliest Accounts to the latter half of the nineteenth century. 3 vols. London, Lippencott.

Buck, Claire. 1992. Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature', London: Bloomsbury.

Limited coverage of fiction, focuses particularly on poetry.

Crawford, Anne et al. 1983. The Europa Biographical Dictionary of British Women: Over 1000 Notable Women from Britain's Past. Gale Research.

The Dictionary of National Biography. 22 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922

Elwood, Mrs. Anne. 1843. Memoirs of the Literary Ladies of England. 2 vols. London, Henry Colburn.

Kunitz, Stanley J and Howard Haycraft. 1952. British Authors Before 1800: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Wilson.

Kunitz, Stanley J and Howard Haycraft. 1952. British Authors of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Wilson.

Schlueter, Paul and June. 1988. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. New York: Garland.

Shattock, Joanne. 1993. Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bibliographies

Beasley, Jerry C. 1978. English Fiction, 1600-1800. A Guide to Information Sources. Detroit: Gale Research.

Block, Andrew. 1961. The English Novel, 1740-1850: A Catalogue Including Prose Romances, Short Stories and Translations of Foreign Fiction. London: Dawson.

Connolly, L. W., and L. P. Wearing. 1978. English Drama and Theatre 1800-1900: A Guide to Information Sources. Detroit: Gale Research.

Davis, Gwenn and Beverly A Joyce. 1991. Poetry by Women to 1900: A Bibliography of American and British Women. London: Mansell.

Kreissman, Bernard. 1983. Minor British Poets: Part one: The Romantic Period, 1789-1839. Davis: The Library, University of California.

Encyclopedias

The World Book Multi Media Encyclopedia. 1997. World Book Inc.

GENERAL READING

Women and Writing

Adburgham, Alison. 1972. Women in Print: Writing Women and Women's Magazines From the Restoration to the Accession of Victoria. Allen & Unwin.

Very useful for information on circulating libraries of the 18th century and women's magazines e.g. Lady's Monthly Museum

Colby, Vineta. n.d. Yesterday's Women: Domestic Realism in the English Novel. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Figes, Eva. 1982. Sex and Subterfuge: Women Novelists to 1850. New York: Macmillan

A very selective bibliography

Maccarthy, Bridget. 1994. The Female Pen: Women Writers and Novelists 1621-1818. Cork: Cork University Press.

Excellent for critical information on the types of novels being produced at the time

Moers, Ellen. 1985. Literary Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Women Writers, various genres, a very useful text

Poovey, Mary. 1984. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Considers cultural values and their influence on imaginative activity, focuses on morality and modesty in their writing.

Sherry, Ruth. 1988. Studying Women's Writing: An Introduction. Edward Arnold.

A basic introduction to women writers, particularly feminist writers.

Yeazell, Ruth Bernard. 1984. Fictions of Modesty: Women and Courtship in the English Novel. Chicago: University of Chigaco Press.

Looks at women's writing in general over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Other

Dobree, Bonally and Norman Davis, eds. 1963. English Literature 1789-1815. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hardy, Barbara. 1985. Forms of Feeling in Victorian Fiction. New York: Methuen.

Richardson, Alan. 1994. Literature, Education and Romanticism: Reading as Social Practice, 1780-1832. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Examines education and how it transformed the face of literature

Tompkins, J. M. S. 1965. The Popular Novel in England. New York: Methuen.

Very useful for the purpose of critical analysis, dedicates a chapter to 'Didacticism and Sensibility'

The Press

Blakey, Dorothy. 1939. The Minerva Press 1790-1820. London: Oxford University Press.

Ideal for studies on authors who published with the minerva press.

Magazines and Periodicals

Mayo, Robert. 1962. The English Novels in the Magazines, 1740-1815: With a catalogue of magazine Novels and Novelettes. The Womens Press.

Puravs, Grace, Kathy Kavanagh and Vicki Smith, eds. 1981. Accessing English Literary Periodicals: A Guide to Microfilm Collection with title, subject, editor and reel number indexes. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.

Spector, Robert Donald. 1966. English Literary Periodicals And the Climate of Opinion during the seven years war. Mouton.

Gothic Writing

Spector, Robert Donald. 1984. The English Gothic: A Bibliographic Guide to writers from Horace Walpole to Mary Shelley. Greenwood Press.

Romanticism

Hilles, Frederick W & Harold Bloom, eds. 1965. From Sensibility to Romanticism: essays presented to Frederick A Pottle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kelly, Gary. 1988. English Fiction of the Romantic Period 1789-1830. New York: Longman.

Analyses the transition from Sensibility to Gothic writing.

Sensibility and the Sentimental

Ellis, Marksman. 1993. The politics of Sensibility: Race, Gender and Commerce in the Sentimental novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Van Sant, Anne Jesse. 1993. Eighteenth Century Sensibility and the Novel: The senses in social context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Religion

The Book of Saints: A Dictionary of Servants of God. 1966. A & C Black.

Poetry

Rothstein, Erie. N.d. The Routledge History of English Poetry. Vol. 3. Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Smith, David Nichol. N.d. Some Observations of Eighteenth Century Poetry. University of Toronto Press.

Sutherland, James. 1948. A Preface to Eighteenth Century Poetry. Oxford University Press.

Watson, J. R. 1989. Pre Romanticism in English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century: The Poetic Art and Significance of Thomson, Gray, Collins, Goldsmith, Cowper and Crabbe: A Selection of Critical Essays. London: Macmillan.

History

Brundage, James A. 1962. The Crusades: A Documentary Survey. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.

Useful for details of the second crusade and issues surrounding religion.

Pernoud, Regine. 1962. The Crusades. Camelot Press.

Gives an overview of the crusades.

Prawer, Joshua. 1972. The World of the Crusades. Weidenfield & Nicholson.

Useful when considering the romance and chivalry of the crusades.

Runciman, Steven. 1952. A History of Crusades & The Kingdom of Jerusalem. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

An overall study of the historical events.

Turner, Fred. 1840s (no exact date). Histories of Brentford. No publisher given.

Williams, Jay. 1962. Knights of the Crusades. London: Cassell.

A basic text, but nonetheless well-illustrated.

Book, publication info.

remarks