A visitor to Bath could easily get the impression that Jane Austen was the only Georgian woman novelist with significant Bath connections, but this was far from the case. Many women writers lived in and visited the City and drew inspiration from it. Some were much more famous and widely read in their own time than Austen. What follows are short accounts of just some of them.
Sarah Fielding
Younger Sister of the more famous novelist Henry, Sarah Fielding wrote more than 4,000 pages of prose fiction, a 366-page translation of Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates, a part of which was still in print as late as 1937, and a short pamphlet of literary criticism last reprinted in 1985. Her novel The Governess, or the Little Female Academy, published in 1749, is considered the first novel written in English aimed at children. In her lifetime, her literary output often came close to outselling that of her more celebrated brother.
Sarah had many links to Bath and was a frequent visitor. Finally, she moved to Bath permanently around 1754 until her death, probably in Walcot in 1768. She and Henry were at the centre of the literary circle that formed around the generosity of Ralph Allan and James Leake, Bath’s famous bookseller and publisher, who was brother-in-law to Sarah’s friend, the novelist Samuel Richardson. The Fielding’s were also linked to Bath via the Fielding family's relationship to the Dukes of Kingston, whose land holdings in Bath are still marked in our street names today. Sarah’s second novel is set in Bath and demonstrates considerable knowledge of the city. The place in Bath most associated with Sarah is Widcombe Lodge, where a plaque still marks her residence. However, much of what is written about Sarah’s residences in Bath comes from the writing of R.E.M Peach, which modern historians have failed to substantiate.
Sarah was born in East Stour, Dorset, in 1710. Around 1720, her father placed his children in the care of their maternal grandmother, Sarah Lady Gould, in Salisbury, where she and her sisters attended Mary Rooke’s boarding school where girls were ‘to be educated and learn to work and read and write and to talk French and Dance and be brought up as Gentlewomen’. Lady Gould won legal custody of the Fielding children. Sarah stayed with her in Salisbury, where she made important friendships that would improve her education and nurture her writing talent.
Lady Gould died in 1733, and Sarah seems to have left Salisbury for extended visits to East Stour, London and Bath. Sarah’s first published work was a ‘letter’ from ‘Leonara to Horatio’, which was included in her brother's novel Joseph Andrews, published in 1742. The following year, Sarah’s short fictional life of Anne Boleyn appeared in Henry’s ‘A Journey from this World to the Next’. Then, in 1744, she published her first complete novel ‘The Adventures of David Simple’. ‘Familiar Letters between the Principal Characters of David Simple and Others’, set in Bath, appeared in 1747. In 1749, she published her only volume of literary criticism ‘Remarks on Clarissa’ and in the same year ‘The Governess, or the Little Female Academy: being the History of Mrs Teachum and her Nine Girls, with their Nine Days Amusement’ which was the first children’s school story exclusive about and for young girls. In 1753, a final sequel to Sarah’s first novel was published ‘The Adventures of David Simple, Volume the Last.’
By the end of 1754, she had lost all her immediate family and was in poor shape financially, but with help from her many friends, she moved permanently to Bath. In 1754, she and Jane Collier published ‘The Cry: a New Dramatic Fable.’ In 1757, backed by 441 subscribers and following prodigious amounts of research, she published her double fictional autobiography ‘The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia’. ‘The History of the Countess of Dellwyn’ followed in 1759, which included an essay on literary theory. Her most popular novel ‘The History of Ophelia’ followed the next year. Sarah’s final triumph came in 1762 with the publication of a work she had been writing and researching since 1758, ‘Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates, with the Defence of Socrates before his Judges translated from the original Greek.’ This book was printed in Bath by the printer and publisher Cornelius Pope.
Sarah is buried in St Mary’s Charlcombe, and a monument to her is in Bath Abbey. The inscription, however, contains several factual errors.
Sarah Scott
Sarah Scott was born Sarah Robinson in 1720, the daughter of Mathew Robinson of Edgeley and West Layton Hall, Yorkshire. Her sister Elizabeth married a much older, wealthy mine owner, Edward Montagu, and, following his death, used her freedom and wealth to create a circle of upper-class intellectual men and, more importantly, women who became known as the Bluestockings.
Sarah was left to care for her dying mother, who had cancer. After her mother died in 1746, Sarah stayed with various friends and relations until, after a visit to Bath, she decided to stay on as a companion to the invalid Lady Barbara Montagu. Sarah published her first book in 1750, a novel titled ‘The History of Cornelia,’ but it enjoyed only modest success.
In 1751, Sarah married George Lewis Scott and set up house in Leicester Square with Lady Barbara as part of the household. The marriage was not a success, and after a minor scandal in 1752, Sarah left her husband, and she and Lady Barbara returned to Bath, where they lived in modest circumstances and devoted their time to good works. From 1754, the two women began spending their summers in Bath Easton and the winters in the city at Beauford Buildings. During this period, Sarah enjoyed a close friendship with Sarah Fielding. At one point, Sarah Fielding is impatient about going and living with Scott and Lady Barbara but is dissuaded by Mrs Montagu. However, Scott and her sister provided much discrete financial assistance to Fielding.
To help with their income, Sarah took up her pen to publish a translation of a French novel and a novel of her own ‘A Journey through Every Stage of Life’ both published in 1754.
Sarah produced ‘The History of Gustav Ericson, King of Sweden’ in 1761 and the following year ‘History of Mecklenburgh, from the first Settlement of the Vandals in that Country to the Present Time’. Also that year, she produced her most successful work, a Utopian novel entitled ‘Millenium Hall and the Country Adjacent’ which went to 4 editions. Millenium Hall was a female commune that Elizabeth Montagu once proposed, making a reality involving her sister and Sarah Fielding.
Lady Barbara died in 1765, but Sarah stayed on in Bath and, with the encouragement of her sister, continued writing. In 1766, she published another Utopian novel, The History of Sir George Ellison.
In 1772, Scott published ‘The Life of Theodore Agrippa d’Aubigne’ a French protestant much admired in England, and in the same year, produced her last novel ‘The test of Filial Duty’ in a series of letters between Miss Emilia Leonard and Miss Charlotte Arlington.’
The death of Edward Montagu in 1775 allowed her sister the freedom to render direct financial assistance, and Sarah stopped publishing and moved around the country, staying with her sister and her friends. In 1787, after an extended stay in Norwich, she took a small house at nearby Catton, where she died in 1795
Ann Ford
Today, Ann Ford is best known as the sitter in Gainsborough’s wonderful portrait known as ‘Portrait of Mrs Philip Thicknesse’, painted around 1760 when she would have been 23. In her time, she was known as a famous beauty, a virtuoso musician and for a life which generated much gossip and scandal. She was also a writer, and her works include ‘Instructions for Playing on the Musical Glasses’, ‘Lives and Writings of the Most Eminent Ladies in France’, ‘Biographical Memoirs’ and her only novel ‘School of Fashion’ whose characters are all thinly disguised members of contemporary society.
Ann spent much time in Bath and lived there from 1767 to 1791, though that period was punctuated by two long continental tours. Latterly, she resided in the Royal Crescent. The Bath concert master Rauzzini greatly admired her talents as a singer. Her husband was the author of ‘The New Prose Bath Guide: for the year 1778’.
As a niece of Dr Ford, the Queen’s physician, and of Gilbert Ford, Attorney General of Jamaica, Ann was readily accepted by fashionable society, where she was celebrated for her beauty, musical talents, and dancing. The cream of London society came to her Sunday concerts, where she played alongside some of the leading professionals. However, her father was so violently opposed to her performing in public that he used a magistrate’s warrant to take her prisoner. Escaping from captivity, she raised £1500 in subscriptions to perform five concerts at the Haymarket’s Little Theatre. At the first of these, her father surrounded the theatre with Bow Street runners who were only dispersed when one of Ann’s aristocratic supporters threatened to bring in a detachment of guards. In 1762, aged 25, she married the notorious Philip Thickness. A journey they made to Italy in 1792 was interrupted by the death of Philip just after they departed from Boulogne. Left alone, Ann was arrested and confined in a convent, but on the death of Robespierre in 1794, she was released. In 1800, she published her novel. Ann died in 1824, aged 86.
Mary Ann Costello
On 28th March 1827, Mrs Hann, aged 81, died in the house in Henrietta Street where she had lived for the last 20 years. This brought to an end an extraordinary life during which she had been a leading actress and a quack medicine seller and had given birth to 13 children by 3 fathers, including 4 sets of twins. One of these children rose to be Prime Minister of Great Britain. She also managed to write a novel considered worthy of being republished in the 21st century.
Mary Ann Costello was born in Ireland in 1747. Her father was a Connacht squire. She appears to have been orphaned at a young age and was raised in London by her maternal grandfather, Col. Guydickens.
She was lauded for her beauty but had little money, so when she met and married George Canning in 1768, it was against the wishes of his family, who cut him off from any prospect of inheritance. In early 1769, Costello gave birth to a daughter, Letitia, who died a few months later. On 22 April 1770, she had the couple's second child, George Canning, the child destined to become Prime Minister.
By 1771, Costello was widowed and was pregnant again, with no financial support. Her third child, a son Thomas, also died in infancy. She became an actress to support her young son; she debuted in Jane Shore at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in November 1773. It was unsuccessful, and Costello had to move to work in more provincial theatres in the west and north of England.
In 1775, when she was performing in Bristol, she began a 6-year relationship with the actor Samuel Reddish, having 5 children with him, including 2 sets of twins. She referred to herself as Mrs Reddish, but there is no evidence of their marriage. Her eldest son, George, was removed from her care and went to live with his uncle Stratford Canning. During this time, she wrote her novel ‘The Offspring of Fancy’, which was published in 1778. This seems to have been one of several money-making schemes she undertook as the condition, probably tertiary syphilis, that would ultimately lead Reddish to be declared insane, destroying his career and earning power.
In February 1783, Mary married a silk mercer from Plymouth, Richard Hunn, a great admirer of all things theatrical. The couple had 5 children, including another 2 sets of twins. Costello's marriage to Hunn ended with his death in the 1790s, and she retired from acting. Before his death, Hunn’s business had failed, and once again, she was left in penury. Mary attempted to make money with an eye ointment, Collysium, but it failed. At this point, her son George came to her rescue, securing her a pension of £500 a year, which enabled her to retire to Bath, where she appears to have lived as a highly regarded member of the community.
Sophia Lee
She was born in 1750 to a theatrical family. Her father was the actor-manager John Lee. After her father’s death, and using money she had earned from her early and very successful playwriting, she and her sisters opened a school for young ladies at Belvedere House in Bath. The sisters enjoyed the friendship of both the Linleys and the Sheridans. Other close friends in Bath included Mrs Siddon, whose daughter was a pupil, Mrs Piozzi and Sir Thomas Lawrence. A wonderfully vivid picture of the school appears in the memoirs of Susan Sibbald, who was a pupil in 1797. The school consisted of some 50 boarders and 20 day scholars, ages 8 to 19 years old, and they were taught French, grammar, geography, writing and arithmetic. They also had music and dancing lessons, the latter provided by the Grand Dame of Bath dancing mistresses Ann Flemming. Every three years, pupils put on a performance at the Upper Assembly Rooms, which were often attended by Royalty.
Sophia’s first play was ‘The Chapter of Accidents’, first produced by George Coleman at the Haymarket in 1780. Her subsequent works included an early best-selling Gothic novel ‘The Recess, or a Tale of Other Times’ published in 1785, admired by Ann Radcliffe and ‘Almeyda, Queen of Grenada’ in 1796. The latter was a tragedy in Blank Verse, which opened in Drury Lane with Sarah Siddens in the lead role.
Sophia also produced several translations. She died in Bristol in 1824.
Frances Burney
Frances Burney was a frequent visitor to Bath and expressed great affection for the city. She had first visited the city in 1767 with her father and lived here with her friends, the Thrales, in 1780 in 14 South Parade. She returned to Bath at 23 Great Stanhope Street between 1815 and 1818. Burney died in 1847 and is buried at St Swithen’s Walcot. She is also a visitor to her friend Hester Thrale's house in Gay Street following Hester’s marriage to the Italian piano teacher Gabriel Poizzi. Hester herself was an established writer.
Frances was born in Lynn Regis, now Kings Lynn, in 1752 to the musician and musicologist Charles Burney and his first wife. Like Austen, she began writing very young. From 1786 to 1790, she was “Keeper of the Robes” to Queen Charlotte. In 1793, at 41, she married the exiled French General Alexandre D’Arblay and had her only child, Alexander, in 1794. Her first novel, Evelina, was a huge bestseller and won critical acclaim, including from her friend Dr Johnson. She went on to write another three novels and several plays. She also wrote a memoir of her father. Frances left many letters and journals on which much of her modern reputation rests. Jane Austen acknowledged having been significantly influenced by Burney.
Harriet Lee
Harriet Lee was born in 1757, the youngest of three sisters, including the bestselling novelist and playwright Sophia. Harriet lived much of her life in Bath, helping her sisters run their much-admired school.
In 1786, Harriet published her first novel, ‘The Errors of Innocence’. More than ten years later, she began what was to be her masterpiece, ‘The Canterbury Tales’, which includes some small contributions by Sophia; by its completion in 1807, it ran to five volumes. The Canterbury Tales was in print for many years and won much admiration from critics and other writers, including Lord Byron.
In addition to this, Harriet produced another novel and a play.
Harriet Lee died in 1851 at the age of 94.
Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire 1757 - 1806, socialite, political organiser, leader of fashion, author and notorious gambler whose marriage to William 5th Duke of Devonshire united two of the great aristocratic families of England, the Spencers and the Cavendishes.
Georgiana lived in and visited Bath throughout her life, and even in old age, she delighted in attending the pupil balls run by Bath’s many schools and dancing teachers at the Assembly Rooms.
The Duchess was an avid writer and an extensive correspondent who wrote poetry and prose from a young age.
Her first published work, in 1773, when she was 16, was a novel entitled ‘Emma; Or, The Unfortunate Attachment: A Sentimental Novel.’ Five years later, she published her most successful work, ‘The Sylph, ’ which satirises the fashionable London Ton, of which she was a central figure for many years. It was commercially very successful, earning four reprints.
Ann Radcliffe
Ann Radcliffe is another novelist who influenced Austen and is explicitly mentioned in Northanger Abbey. The young Ann Ward came to live in Bath at the age of 8 in 1772 when, through the good offices of her uncle Thomas Bentley, her father was appointed to manage the showroom being opened by Bentley and his more famous partner Josiah Wedgwood. Bentley had secured premises in Westgate buildings in 1770, and William Ward is listed as the tenant as early as December 1771. Before this appointment, Ann’s father, William, had been the proprietor of a haberdashery in Holborn. By May of 1772, when Mrs Wedgwood was in Bath recuperating from an illness, her niece was able to report that she had received ‘the kind attention of a respectable couple named Ward who were to manage the showroom.’
Josiah himself came to Bath to help with the opening in June 1772. The showroom was decorated with yellow wallpaper to better show off the black basalt vases. The opening was delayed by supply issues, missed the season, and postponed to autumn.
When the showroom finally opened, Wedgwood was shocked by Ward’s marketing methods, which he regarded as vulgar.
However, despite all the setbacks by early 1773, Wedgwood was ‘glad to hear that Mrs Ward had some hopes of the business answering to them at Bath. Pray make my best respects to her and my love to Miss Nancy’. Miss Nancy was Ann’s family nickname.
Wedgwood had never liked Westgate Street, which he described as being ‘full of Coal Carts, Coal Horses & Asses - & a great way from the Town and the Parades’. So, at the end of 1774, the showroom and the Wards relocated near the bottom of Milsom Street. In 1779, they moved again to No. 22, one door from the top. The directories of the time suggest that the Wards supplemented their earnings by operating part of their home as a lodging house.
It is possible that Ann spent at least fifteen of the most formative years of her life in Bath but rarely acknowledged it. Her first biographer only mentions it twice, once in relation to her recollections of Mrs Siddons and once in regard to her marriage to William Radcliffe in Bath in 1787 when she was 23. This, in part, reflects the amount of time she spent in her uncle's house in Chelsea but may also reflect the shame she seems to have felt at her father's lowly status in Bath society.
Ann became one of the foundational authors of the Gothic school of novel writing. She has been credited with making the genre respectable. She was one of the most successful writers of her time and was widely admired by both readers and critics. Of the six novels she wrote, The Mysteries of Udolpho, thanks mainly to Austen, is probably the best known today.
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley developed and wrote much of the novel ‘Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus, on which her reputation rests while living in Bath.
In 1816, after leaving Byron in Geneva, Percy Shelley, the 19-year-old Mary Godwin, the heavily pregnant Clare Clermont Mary’s stepsister and Mary’s 2-year-old son and his nurse travelled through France to Le Havre, where they took ship for Portsmouth. At Portsmouth, Shelley left the party to visit a friend in Great Marlow, and the others went on to Bath. Arriving in Bath on the 10th of September, Mary and Clare took two sets of lodgings in Bath, the first at 5 Abbey Church Yard, the location of which is now marked by a plaque. The other address was at 12 New Bond Street.
It was now that Mary started earnestly to turn the story idea she had conceived in Geneva into a full-blown novel and purchased new notebooks to begin her writing. On the 5th of December, Mary wrote to Shelley saying she had completed chapter 4.
Mary and Percy left Bath for London on 30th December, where they were married at St Mildred’s Church. Claire remained in Bath and gave birth to a daughter on the 12th of January 1817. The Shelleys left Bath on the 27th of February 1816. Mary was pregnant for the third time when they left and just starting on the second notebook.
