The Corvey Novels Project at the University of Nebraska

— Studies in British Literature of the Romantic Period —

 

Bio-critical sketch of Jane West with particular relevance to A Gossip's Story

Jane West (1758-1852)

Novelist, poet, and playwright Jane West was born on April 30, 1758. She was the only child of John and Jane Iliffe, and at age 11 moved with them to Desborough, Northamptonshire. She was self-educated and began her literary career at age 13 when she started writing poetry. She continued writing until 1827. In a letter to Bishop Percy, dated 1800, she wrote, "The catalogue of my compositions previous to my attaining twenty would be formidable. Thousands of lines flowed in very easy measure. I scorned correction, and never blotted."

In 1783 she married well-known yeoman farmer Thomas West of Little Bowden, Northants., with whom she had three sons, Thomas (born 1783), John (born 1787), and Edward (born 1794). West always maintained that her housework and duties as a wife and mother took precedence over her writing, and claimed that she wrote in order to provide for her children, which she expressed in her poem addressed 'To the Hon. Mrs C-e':

You said the author was a charmer,
Self-taught, and married to a farmer;
Who wrote all kinds of verse with ease,
Made pies and puddings, frocks and cheese.
Her situation, tho' obscure,
Was not contemptible or poor.
Her conversation spoke a mind
Studious to please, but unrefin'd.

(Miscellaneous Poems, 1791)

The first published work attributed to her by name, Miscellaneous Poems and a Tragedy, appeared in 1791, although she had already published Miscellaneous Poems in 1780, Miscellaneous Poetry in 1786, and a long poem entitled The Humours of Brighthelmstone in 1788. One of her poems in the 1791 collection expresses her fear that a woman of her low class should not waste time writing poetry, but she ultimately defends her poetry because of it's moral aims: "Give to morality thy noblest lays / And fix thy hopes, where time destroys no more."

Although West published quite a volume of poetry and plays, she is most well known for her novels, specifically her first two titles, The Advantages of Education (1783) and A Gossip's Story and a Legendary Tale (1797), which are both recognized as obvious examples of the anti-sensibility plot as well as preaching the benefit of education for women. The reasonable conservatism set forth in her second book was admired by both Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft. A Gossip's Story is often likened to Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, as both involve a heroine of sensibility with unrealistic notions of romance and a heroine of sense who uses intelligence and wit when dealing with love. Writing temporarily under the alias of Prudentia Homespun, an elderly spinster who lent a sense of irony and humor to the instructive tone in her novels, West set her heroines in conventionally rural, middle-class societies in which they were forced to adapt their wants and expectations.

These two novels were followed closely by the anti-Jacobin novel A Tale of the Times (1799), and The Infidel Father (1802), both of which focused on the concept of social disintegration. West then became interested in historical novels, publishing The Loyalists (1812), which focused on the Civil War that had taken place a century earlier, and the historical romance Alicia de Lacey (1814). West published her final novel, Ringrove, in 1827.

Jane West died on March 25, 1852 in Little Bowden and was buried there in the family plot at St. Nicholas's Church. She lived to be ninety-four and her writing spanned a period of more than fifty years. During her life she was an active writer, mother, wife, and advocate for the education of women.

SOURCES:

Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements & Isabel Grundy, eds., The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. New Haven: Yale UP, 1990.
Paul Schlueter & June Schlueter, eds., An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. New York: Garland, 1988.
Sir Leslie Stephen & Sir Sydney Lee, eds., The Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XX. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1937-1938.
Janet Todd, ed., British Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide. New York: Continuum, 1989.
Janet Todd, ed., A Dictionary of British and American Women Authors 1660-1800. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985.

- Prepared by Kristen A. Elias, University of Nebraska, December 2002