Sarah Fielding (1710-1768)
‘There lived in the Northern Parts of England a Gentlewoman, who undertook the Education of young Ladies; and this Trust she endeavoured faithfully to discharge, by instructing those committed to her Care in Reading, Writing, Working, and in all proper Forms of Behaviour’.
The Governess; Or, The Little Female Academy. Calculated for the Entertainment and Instruction of Young Ladies in Their Education (1749) p. 1
The third daughter of Sarah and Colonel Edmund Fielding, Sarah Fielding’s eldest brother was the novelist Henry Fielding, whose literary reputation as the author of Joseph Andrews (1742) and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) outshines that of his sister in the twenty-first century. In the mid-eighteenth century, however, this was not the case: Sarah Fielding’s novel The Adventures of David Simple (1744), inspired by Don Quixote and the vogue for the picaresque, gained its writer considerable literary prestige, and was considered by its first readers to be at least the equal of Henry Fielding’s work. Scholars are increasingly beginning to pay more attention to Sarah Fielding’s original novels and her works for children.
After the death of their mother in 1718, the six Fielding children were dispatched to boarding school: Henry to Eton, and his three sisters to a school in Salisbury, where they received instruction in French, dancing, reading and writing. It is clear from her novels, however, that Sarah Fielding’s reading outside of her formal education was extensive: there are allusions to English authors such as Milton and Shakespeare, as well as classical authors such as Virgil and Horace. The prime motivation for her writing career seems to have been financial, and was much lamented by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a wealthy cousin of the family who felt certain that Sarah must have despised writing to earn her bread. Sarah Fielding’s preface to The Adventures of David Simple provides an ‘apology’ for authorship in the following terms: ‘Perhaps the best Excuse that can be made for a Woman’s venturing to write at all, is that which really produced this Book – Distress in her Circumstances’.
Sarah Fielding is represented in this exhibition by her work for young ladies, The Governess; Or, The Little Female Academy. Calculated for the Entertainment and Instruction of Young Ladies in Their Education. First published in 1749, the work is frequently cited as the earliest example of a sustained narrative fiction for girls. Mrs Teachum, a ‘Gentlewoman’ in the North of England, is a widow who has lost both her daughters within a year of her husband’s death, and who opens a female academy as a means of supporting herself. This academy is highly selective, and thus reflects the mid-eighteenth-century concern, most famously articulated by Rousseau in his Emile (1762), that tutors should move away from rote-learning, and that the best educational methods are personalized and highly individual. Mrs Teachum is ‘resolved to take no more Scholars than she could have an eye to herself, without the help of other Teachers’, and the number of pupils is therefore capped at nine girls, between the ages of eight and fourteen. Within this framework narrative of a female academy, the stories that follow include fairy tales, fables, and the girls’ own ‘histories’. All are designed to teach strong moral lessons, and to ‘improve’ the reader through reading of the improvement of the fictional girls. Although, as Susan Staves points out in A Literary History of Women’s Writing in Britain, 1660-1789 (2006) ‘Sarah Fielding herself never married, had no children, and never opened a school’, nevertheless ‘the success of The Governess contributed a model of female authority in the education of girls and helped lay a foundation for later women writers of children’s books and books on the education of children, as well as for women who set up boarding schools’. Most of the later educationalists and writers for children represented in this exhibition were indebted to her pioneering work.
The Governess; Or, The Little Female Academy. Calculated for the Entertainment and Instruction of Young Ladies in Their Education (1749) p. 1
The third daughter of Sarah and Colonel Edmund Fielding, Sarah Fielding’s eldest brother was the novelist Henry Fielding, whose literary reputation as the author of Joseph Andrews (1742) and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) outshines that of his sister in the twenty-first century. In the mid-eighteenth century, however, this was not the case: Sarah Fielding’s novel The Adventures of David Simple (1744), inspired by Don Quixote and the vogue for the picaresque, gained its writer considerable literary prestige, and was considered by its first readers to be at least the equal of Henry Fielding’s work. Scholars are increasingly beginning to pay more attention to Sarah Fielding’s original novels and her works for children.
After the death of their mother in 1718, the six Fielding children were dispatched to boarding school: Henry to Eton, and his three sisters to a school in Salisbury, where they received instruction in French, dancing, reading and writing. It is clear from her novels, however, that Sarah Fielding’s reading outside of her formal education was extensive: there are allusions to English authors such as Milton and Shakespeare, as well as classical authors such as Virgil and Horace. The prime motivation for her writing career seems to have been financial, and was much lamented by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a wealthy cousin of the family who felt certain that Sarah must have despised writing to earn her bread. Sarah Fielding’s preface to The Adventures of David Simple provides an ‘apology’ for authorship in the following terms: ‘Perhaps the best Excuse that can be made for a Woman’s venturing to write at all, is that which really produced this Book – Distress in her Circumstances’.
Sarah Fielding is represented in this exhibition by her work for young ladies, The Governess; Or, The Little Female Academy. Calculated for the Entertainment and Instruction of Young Ladies in Their Education. First published in 1749, the work is frequently cited as the earliest example of a sustained narrative fiction for girls. Mrs Teachum, a ‘Gentlewoman’ in the North of England, is a widow who has lost both her daughters within a year of her husband’s death, and who opens a female academy as a means of supporting herself. This academy is highly selective, and thus reflects the mid-eighteenth-century concern, most famously articulated by Rousseau in his Emile (1762), that tutors should move away from rote-learning, and that the best educational methods are personalized and highly individual. Mrs Teachum is ‘resolved to take no more Scholars than she could have an eye to herself, without the help of other Teachers’, and the number of pupils is therefore capped at nine girls, between the ages of eight and fourteen. Within this framework narrative of a female academy, the stories that follow include fairy tales, fables, and the girls’ own ‘histories’. All are designed to teach strong moral lessons, and to ‘improve’ the reader through reading of the improvement of the fictional girls. Although, as Susan Staves points out in A Literary History of Women’s Writing in Britain, 1660-1789 (2006) ‘Sarah Fielding herself never married, had no children, and never opened a school’, nevertheless ‘the success of The Governess contributed a model of female authority in the education of girls and helped lay a foundation for later women writers of children’s books and books on the education of children, as well as for women who set up boarding schools’. Most of the later educationalists and writers for children represented in this exhibition were indebted to her pioneering work.
