Corvey 'Adopt-an-Author'
Anna Brownell Jameson |
The Corvey Project
at Sheffield Hallam University |
A summary of the contemporary critical reception
regarding The Diary of the Ennuyee and The Loves of the
Poets by Anna Jameson
Anna Jameson was a significant
literary presence within Victorian society, who gained her reputation
through the meticulous detail and research that she was prepared to dedicate
to her work. Her career spanned from the her first publication The Diary
of an Ennuyee, which was published in 1826 when Anna was 32, until after
her death, when Lady Eastlake completed Jameson’s final piece of work and
published it posthumously in 1864.
Henry Colburn published her first
publication The Diary of an Ennuyee anonymously. The Westminster
Review commented that The Diary of an Ennuyee was ‘Well written
and interesting but still an imposture, and not of a kind which is
admissible’ (Westminster Review, 1826:339). The Monthly Review
assessed The Diary of an Ennuyee in April 1826 and the critic was
uncertain as to how the piece should be reviewed because it was not clear
whether the piece was fact or fiction:
‘We confess that we have felt some embarrassment how to
treat this little volume. If it be what it professes, the genuine diary of a
young and broken hearted woman… it is scarcely matter for cold and
fastidious criticism’ (Monthly Review, 1826:414).
However, the critic appears to be
aware that the diary may be intended for publication noting that there are
‘suspicious traces of bookmaking’. The reviewer appears to feel that the
subject matter of The Diary was clichéd but that on the occasions
when the author is lifted from her melancholic manner, ‘her narrative
exhibits flashes of animation and gaiety’ (Monthly Review, 1826:
419). With regard to the poems that Jameson inserted within the text, the
critic observes that none ‘rise at all above mediocrity.’
Victorian values are evident from
the critic’s response to Jameson’s freedom of expression. He appears to be
offended by it, commenting that:
‘There is at times in the Diary rather more freedom of
expression than is usually found in the untravelled English woman of five
and twenty... When the characteristics of Titian’s genius are examined in
the Diary we are told of his “love of pleasure and his love of women”...
Most true; but we could have forgiven less accurate description from the pen
of a young English woman’ (Monthly Review, 1826: 461).
Although at this stage his disdain
is clear, the reviewer seems to become absorbed by the tragedy and romance
of The Diary of an Ennuyee towards the end of the text: ‘there is
something affecting and mournful in these closing pages, written as it were,
between time and eternity and yet nothing the habitual current of time
filled to the last with the daily occurrences of a journey which conducted
the young and heartsicken traveller only to a tomb’ (Monthly Review,
1826:462). The Diary of an Ennuyee was not a bestseller, but Clara
Thomas observed that it did become ‘part of “la mode” of the day’ (Thomas,
1967:39), and female illness is thought to have become a literary vogue
partly as a result of the influence of The Diary of an Ennuyee.
Jameson’s second book The Loves
of the Poets was published in 1829 and was reviewed by September in
Blackwood’s by the critic John Wilson writing under the name of
‘Christopher North’. The review is confusing and complex, but Wilson, though
patronising, does seem at times to praise The Loves of the Poets. He
writes for fifteen pages on the text, although he often seems to deviate
from the subject matter. ‘But we must come to the book in hand. About the
loves of some of the true poets, the fair writer knows more than we do –
about some less – and about others pretty much the same; but we shall be
happy to be led by so sweet a conductress through scenes of such
enchantment. She shall wave us on with her own white arms – she shall, in
her own silver voice “tell the story of their loves”’(Blackwood’s,
1829:528).
He also praises her choice of
subject:
‘Nothing is a surer proof of genius than the choice of a
subject at once new and natural and “The Loves of the Poets” is of that
character.’
However tongue-in-cheek the review
itself, Blackwood’s prestige as a publication was certainly
significant enough to ensure that people would buy The Loves of the Poets
simply because Blackwood’s saw it as worthy of a review. Although Anna
Jameson did not attain a significant literary reputation with either of her
first two books, the fact that an unknown female writer could receive two
reviews for her first publication (The Diary of an Ennuyee), followed
by a review in a important publication like Blackwood’s for her
second, was a significant achievement.
Bibliography |