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Værker af Richard Johnson

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Kanonisk navn
Johnson, Richard
Andre navne
Cooper, Samuel
Cooper, Rev. Mr
Nationalitet
England
Relationer
children's author
author (geography and history)
Kort biografi
Eighteenth century author, with first editions published 1789-1801 at least.

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Originally published anonymously in 1770, this episodic children's novel, which has now been identified as the work of one Richard Johnson, takes place at a girls' boarding school some few miles from London. The framing device concerns a governess (as a headmistress of that time would have been known) who wishes to test her nine young scholars' improvement in their studies, and who therefore has each of them give a Saturday evening address on "some moral and entertaining subject." These "little female orators" deliver their speeches to the school, while the governess stands ready to expound upon the message found in each talk, at the end of the evening. The nine orations are as follows:

The First Night sees Miss Deborah Grace discussing the acquisition of knowledge and the nature of time, and how engaging in the correct employments - reading, studying, thinking - will lead us to lengthen our lives. She buttresses her argument with references to The Alcoran (the Koran), as well as Turkish Tales. The governess praises Miss Deborah's delicacy, but censures her for reading a book like The Alcoran without her father's knowledge or permission.

The Second Night sees Miss Dolly Goodchild advocating for the idea that how we perceive our life circumstances is more germane to whether we are happy, than the circumstances themselves. She retells an "Oriental Tale" involving the poor peasant Aouge, who learns this lesson in a fantastical way, in order to illustrate her point.

On The Third Night, Miss Penelope Lovebook retells The Vision of Mirza, poet Joseph Addison's 1711 allegory about the nature of life, time and wisdom. The governess instructs her pupils to regard this as a fairy story, but one with an important lesson to impart about the uncertainty of human life, and the value of pursuing that which is more enduring.

Miss Betty Thoughtful discusses the nature of a lady's fan on The Fourth Night, comparing it to a man's sword, and setting out its use in various maneuvers. Here the governess steps in to impart the idea that any fault in fan usage lies with the lady wielding it, and that it must be used with prudence and discretion.

The Fifth Night sees Miss Polly Telltruth relating a tale from "the savage and wild Americans" (AKA, Native Americans), in which the visionary Marraton visits the spirit world, and encounters the ghost of his beloved Yaratilda. The governess is most emphatic in instructing her girls that this sort of tale should be approached cautiously, and only as entertainment.

On The Sixth Night the governess must step in and name an orator, as the girls themselves, who had previously been selecting the speakers, forgot to do so. So it is that Miss Deborah Mindful relates the extraordinary tale of Brunetta and Phillis, two young girls from London, both born on the same day in 1688, who had been the best of friends until they reached the age of fifteen. At this point they became envious of, and hateful toward one another, carrying on a bitter rivalry that lasted into their married years, which they carried with them to the West Indies, and which eventually ruined their lives. The girls decided they will henceforth punish unruly peers by naming them Brunetta and Phillis.

The Seventh Night sees Miss Susan Goodley relating a French fairytale she had just recently translated, in which two brothers - Rosimond and Bramintes - react very differently when given a magical ring by a woodland fairy. The governess observes here that power is a very dangerous thing, when not used with prudence, wisdom and moderation.

On The Eighth Night Miss Sally Readwell, seeking to redress the imbalance in the depiction of female weakness and vice in male-dominated literature, relates the story of Inkle and Yarico, from Ligon's account of Barbados. In this story the duplicitous Inkle, an Englishman saved by a native woman, tricks his savior into accompanying him to Barbados, where he sells her as a slave. The governess comments here upon the "fatal effect of early prejudice," in poisoning the seed of every virtue.

Finally, on The Ninth Night, Miss Nancy Goodwill discusses the importance of seeking the proper kind of pleasure and entertainment, in the upcoming holiday from school, emphasizing in particular the idea of only attending those plays which would not make a lady blush.

Read for a paper I once wrote on the influence of Sarah Fielding's 1749 The Governess; or, The Little Female Academy on subsequent girls' educational narratives from 1750-1820, The Little Female Orators; or, Nine Evenings Entertainment, With Observations was quite a fascinating book. It has many of the characteristics of eighteenth-century English children's literature, from the overt didacticism of the piece, to the use of copious inset stories, to illustrate the various moral messages. Much like Fielding's work, and like many other works of the period for both children and adults, Richard Johnson uses aptronyms - Dolly Goodchild, Betsy Thoughtful, and so on - in naming his characters, which was quite charming. I was struck by a number of things, in the course of my reading, but chief among them was the idea of controlling what literature young ladies consumed. When the governess reproves Deborah Grace for reading the Koran, she states: "Ideas impressed on your mind in your early years, are very difficult ever to be totally removed, and hence it is evident, how much young ladies ought to be looked after, and permitted to read those books only, which may tend to rivet on their minds the practice of every social virtue." The tension between this controlling impulse, when it comes to girls' reading, and the liberatory potential implicit in girls' schooling, is a fascinating one, and the subject of the paper mentioned above. Although gendered in a way we would find offensive today, I think this idea - that what children consume, in the way of media, is deeply influential, and ought therefore to be carefully curated - is still very much with us today, and likely will always be so. What has changed is not the curatorial impulse itself - just look at the tussles in today's children's book world about issues of diversity and representation, and the social messages communicated in juvenile books - but rather what is considered desirable and undesirable, in terms of message.

Tracking those changes over time - the way the messages we impart in our children's books transform, even as their didactic importance remains constant - is of immense interest to me as a scholar. Also of interest to me is the transmission of stories and texts. Reading this book is fascinating, not just because of what it reveals about what was considered desirable for young girls to read in late 18th-century England, but because it also reveals what was actually available to such readers. I enjoyed tracking down likely sources for all of the inset stories here. One initial puzzle, in this respect, was the tale of Marraton and Yaratilda, as the earliest publication I could find, of this story in its own right, dates from 1793. Of course, Johnson's book was published in 1770, so it must have been in print earlier, possibly in a collection of stories, or in the pages of a literary magazine. I eventually tracked it down in a collection of Addison's work, published long after the fact, and suspect it must have first seen print in The Spectator. Heady stuff!

This is a very niche kind of work, and I'm honestly not sure it will have much interest, save for those readers researching eighteenth-century children's literature, or the history of girls' reading. I do see that one other reader online has reviewed it, which is encouraging - I rarely see that, in some of these more obscure older books of mine - so perhaps others might enjoy it as well.
… (mere)
 
Markeret
AbigailAdams26 | Apr 25, 2020 |

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Statistikker

Værker
8
Medlemmer
13
Popularitet
#774,335
Vurdering
3.0
Anmeldelser
1
ISBN
131
Sprog
7