Catherine Cuthbertson

A portion of the first sentence of Forest of Montalbano (London: George Robinson, 1810)

Catherine Cuthbertson was an English-language novelist published in London in the early 19th century. She may also have written an unpublished 1803 play under the name "Miss Cuthbertson".

Unknowns

Cuthbertson's origins are not known, although it appears that she was born before 1780, was the daughter of an army officer, and had at least four siblings. She is thought to have died some time after her final known book appeared in 1830.[1] Suppositions that she was a sister of Helen Craik have not been substantiated.[2]

Works

Among her works were Romance of the Pyrenees (1803), Forest of Montalbano (1810), Adelaide; or, The Countercharm (1813), Rosabella, or A Mother's Marriage (1817), The Hut and the Castle: a Romance (1823), and Sir Ethelbert; or, the Dissolution of Monasteries (1830).[3][4] At least one, Santo Sebastiano (1806), was published twice in penny instalments, as The Heiress of Montalvan, or First and Second Love(1845–46) and as Santo Sebastiano, or The Heiress of Montalvan (1847–48).[5]

Cuthbertson has been described by present-day scholars as a "fairly conventional novelist" using "historically realised settings (often in continental Europe)" with "happy endings". Her upper-class characters appear virtuous, her lower-class ones comic or on occasions horrific.[1] A recent anthologist calls her "one of the best of the Radcliffe imitators.[6] Romance of the Pyrenees was serialized in the Lady’s Magazine starting in February 1804, "probably because the expected second sale did not warrant the cost." It took three years, and "it is the longest novel ever published in an eighteenth-century miscellany, with the single exception of Pamela."[7] The work was also translated into French (but attributed there to Radcliffe)[2] and German.[6] Sir Ethelbert has been noted as having footnotes which reflect wide historical reading.[8]

External source

References

  1. 1 2 Orlando Project Retrieved 28 November 2015
  2. 1 2 Corvey "Adopt an Author": "Biography of Catherine Cuthbertson by Beryl Chaudhuri" Retrieved 28 November 2015.
  3. ↑ Joanne Shattock: Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, Vol. 4; Volumes 1800–1900 (Cambridge, UK: CUP), 2000.
  4. ↑ Open Library Catherine Cuthbertson.
  5. ↑ Montague Summers: A Gothic Bibliography (New York: Russell & Russell, 1964 [1941]), p. 494.
  6. 1 2 Rictor Norton, ed.: Gothic Readings. The First Wave 1760–1840 (London: Leicester University Press), p. 88. Retrieved 28 November 2015.
  7. ↑ Robert D. Mayo, The English Novel in the Magazines, 1740–1815 (London: The Women's Press), pp. 232–33. Quoted in Corvey.
  8. ↑ The Feminist Companion to Literature in English, eds Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 257.
  9. ↑ British Library catalogue Retrieved 28 November 2015.
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