Sarah Green

Mrs. Green. Who is the Bridegroom? or, Nuptial Discoveries, a Novel

London:  A. K. Newman and Co., 1822

Biographical Information about Sarah Green

Green, Sarah (fl. 1790-1825), novelist, was, according to A Biographical Dictionary of the Living Authors of Great Britain and Ireland, 'a native of Ireland'. Latterly her address was 18 Dartmouth Street, Westminster, near St James's Park. Charles Henly, or, The Fugitive Restored, published by the Minerva Press in 1790, is sometimes ascribed to her on the evidence of a Minerva Library catalogue of 1814 assigning the novel to 'Mrs Green'. Several of her works were printed by the Minerva Press, including the treatise Mental Improvement for a Young Lady (1793), 'addressed to a favourite niece'; its praise of Fanny Burney perhaps suggests novelistic ambition. In 1795 she defended the sanity of the visionary Richard Brothers (1757-1824) in A Letter to the Publisher of Brothers's Prophecies; the glimpses of somewhat fervent spiritual life afforded there seem at odds with the conservatism of her other work.

In 1799 Green embarked on a productive career as a novelist, with the first work of fiction that can be attributed to her with any certainty, Court Intrigue, or, The Victim of Constancy. Over the next twenty-six years she produced a further sixteen substantial novels, usually under pseudonyms (a Cockney) or partially concealed authorship (S. G****). Much of her work was professedly satirical in character; in Romance Readers and Romance Writers (1810) and Scotch Novel Reading, or, Modern Quackery (1824) particularly, she addressed the issues of her profession in a highly self-conscious way. She also wrote historical romances, and in The Carthusian Friar (1814) produced a successful imitation of Radcliffean Gothic. There were also a number of tales of marriage in contemporary settings. Her novels were fairly expensive-The Royal Exile (1811) was priced at £1-and most of them were reviewed in the standard journals. Comment was initially rather supercilious. The Private History of the Court of England (1808), a characteristic mix of history and invention, was loftily dismissed by the Monthly Review as a 'clumsy fiction' of scurrilous intent because of its recasting of the prince of Wales's amours into a fifteenth-century setting (58, January-April 1809, 101). The Reformist!!! (1810), a satire on Methodism, was thought to be 'good-humouredly written' but improper in its venturing onto religious controversy (Monthly Magazine, 30, supplement, 31 January 1811, 676), while the Monthly Review found it too slavish in its adherence to government policy (64, February 1811, 216-17). The latter article also questioned the gender of the writer:  "we cannot be such dupes of the preface as to believe that the experience of a lady could have furnished all the scenes which are here delineated; and much less would we attribute to a female pen the great illiberality which occasionally displays itself."

The view was reiterated in the same journal's review of Good Men of Modern Date (1811), though it was also noted that the work contained 'some grammatical errors that savour not of a classical education' (Monthly Review, 68, May-August 1812, 109). None the less, guarded praise of the characterization and humour in the novels began to emerge, and the British Critic four times declared Green 'well qualified for much better undertakings' (35, January-June 1810, 299; 36, July-December 1810, 407; 37, January-June 1811, 414; and 39, March 1812, 311). The last dated work ascribed to her is Parents and Wives, or, Inconsistency and Mistakes (1825).
-- Paul Baines

Sources

Blain, Clements & Grundy, Feminist companion to Literature in English, 457-8 ·
D. Blakey, The Minerva Press, 1790-1820 (1939), 149, 163, 177, 188, 232-3, 256 ·
[J. Watkins and F. Shoberl], A biographical dictionary of the living authors of Great Britain and Ireland (1816) ·
E. Copeland, Women writing about money: women's fiction in England, 1790-1820 (1995), 11, 18-19, 76-84, 172-5, 182, 190 ·
W. S. Ward, Literary reviews in British periodicals, 1798-1820: a bibliography, 1 (1972), 288-9 ·
Monthly Review, new ser., 58 (1809), 101 ·
Monthly Review, new ser., 64 (1811), 216-17; and 68 (1812), 109 ·
British Critic, 35 (1810), 299;  36 (1810), 407; 37 (1811), 414; 39 (1812), 311 ·
Monthly Magazine, 30 (31 Jan 1811), 676 [suppl.] ·
M. Summers, A Gothic bibliography (1940), 51-2, 262, 272, 286, 292, 323-4, 333, 342, 345, 359, 457, 461, 469, 472, 476, 484, 489, 528 ·
M. B. Tymn, ed., Horror literature: a core collection and reference guide (1981), 75 ·
W. S. Ward, Literary reviews in British periodicals, 1821-1826: a bibliography (1977), 104 ·
catalogue, JRL ·
The new Cambridge bibliography of English literature, [2nd edn], 3, ed. G. Watson (1969), col. 729

Paul Baines, 'Green, Sarah (fl. 1790-1825)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://0-www.oxforddnb.com.library.unl.edu:80/view/article/45849, accessed 20 April 2006]
Sarah Green (fl. 1790-1825): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/45849

-- Prepared by Hyejung Jun, University of Nebraska, April 2006.
© Hyejung Jun, 2006