Frances Moore Brooke was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 novelist, essayist, playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

 and translator

Translation

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...

.

Biography

Brooke was born in, Claypole, Lincolnshire, the daughter of a clergyman. By the late 1740s, she had moved to London, where she embarked on her career as a poet and playwright. As well, under the pseudonym of "Mary Singleton, Spinster," she edited thirty-seven issues of her own weekly periodical, "Old Maid" (1755–1756).

In 1756 she married Rev. Dr. John Brooke, rector at Colney, Norfolk. The following year he left for Canada as a military chaplain while his wife remained in England. In 1763 she wrote her first novel, The History of Lady Julia Mandeville

In the same year Brooke sailed to Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 to join her husband, who was then chaplain to the British garrison there. In autumn 1768 she returned to London, where she continued her career.

Brooke was well-known in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

's literary and theatrical

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 communities. In 1769 she published "The History of Emily Montague." This was the first novel written in Canada. This brief stint in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 has caused some critics to label her "the first novelist in North America." Anyway "The History of Emily Montague" is held as the first Canadian novel. Evidence of Brooke's wisdom and experience of life and its vicissitudes is apparent in her writing. One exemplary observation reflects that "It is a painful consideration, my dear, that the happiness or misery of our lives are generally determined before we are proper judges of either."

She died in Sleaford

Sleaford

Sleaford is a town in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. It is located thirteen miles northeast of Grantham, seventeen miles west of Boston, and nineteen miles south of Lincoln, and had a total resident population of around 14,500 in 6,167 households at the time...

, England.

Works

• Letters from Juliet Lady Catesby to her friend, Lady Henrietta Campley - 1760 (a translation from the original French by Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni, 1759)
• The History of Lady Julia Mandeville - 1763
• The History of Emily Montague - 1769
• The Excursion - 1777
• The Siege of Sinopoe - 1781
• Rosina: A Comic Opera, in Two Acts - 1783
• Marian: A Comic Opera, in Two Acts - 1788
• The History of Charles Mandeville - 1790

Studies of Brooke's Works

Note: most entries below are from the Selected bibliography: Frances Moore Brooke by Jessica Smith and Paula Backscheider, which additionally offers references to editions of Frances Brooke's works as well as full-length critical monographs and biographical studies of the author.

• Raeleen Chai-Elsholz, "Textual Allusions and Narrative Voice in the Lettres de Milady Juliette Catesby and its English Translation [by Frances Moore Brooke]", in La traduction du discours amoureux (1660–1830), eds. Annie Cointre, Florence Lautel-Ribstein, Annie Rivara (Metz: CETT, 2006).
• Juliet McMaster, "Young Jane Austen and the First Canadian Novel: From Emily Montague to 'Amelia Webster' and Love and Freindship," Eighteenth-Century Fiction 11 (April 1999): 339-46.
• Robert James Merrett, "Signs of Nationalism in The History of Emily Montague, Canadians of Old and the Imperialist: Cultural Displacement and the Semiotics of Wine," Semiotic Inquiry 14 (1994): 235-50.
• Robin Howells, "Dialogism in Canada's First Novel: The History of Emily Montague," Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 20 (1993): 437-50.
• Dermot McCarthy, "Sisters Under the Mink: The Correspondent Fear in The History of Emily Montague," Essays on Canadian Writing 51-52 (Winter-Spring 1993): 340-57.
• Jane Sellwood, "'A Little Acid Is Absolutely Necessary': Narrative as Coquette in Frances Brooke's The History of Emily Montague," Canadian Literature 136 (1993): 60-79.
• Barbara M. Benedict, "The Margins of Sentiment: Nature, Letter, and Law in Frances Brooke's Epistolary Novels," ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 23, no. 3 (July 1992): 7-25.
• Robert Merrett, "The Politics of Romance in The History of Emily Montague [sic]," Canadian Literature 133 (Summer 1992): 92-108.
• Frances Teague, "Frances Brooke's Imagined Epistles," Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 304 (1992): 711-12.
• K.J.H. Berland, "A Tax on Old Maids and Bachelors: Frances Brooke's Old Maid," in Eighteenth-Century Women and Literature, ed. Frederick Keener and Susan Lorsch (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 29-35.
• Lorraine McMullen, "Frances Brooke's Old Maid: New Ideas in Entertaining Form," Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (1989) 669-70.
• Barbara Godard, "Listening for the Silence: Native Women's Traditional Narratives," in The Native in Literature, ed. Thomas King, Cheryl Calver, and Helen Hoy (Toronto: ECW Press, 1987), 133-58.
• K.J.H. Berland, "The True Epicurean Philosopher: Some Influences on Frances Brooke's History of Emily Montague," Dalhousie Review 66 (1986): 286-300.
• Ann Edwards Boutelle, "Frances Brooke's Emily Montague (1769): Canada and Woman's Rights," Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12 (1986): 7-16.
• Katherine M. Rogers, "Dreams and Nightmares: Male Characters in the Feminine Novel of the Eighteenth Century," in Men by Women, ed. Janet Todd, Women in Literature, n.s. 2 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982), 9-24.
• Lorraine McMullen, "Double Image: Frances Brooke's Women Characters," World Literature Written in English 21, no. 2 (Summer 1982): 356-63.
• Mary Jane Edwards, "Frances Brooke's The History of Emily Montague: A Biographical Context," English Studies in Canada 7, no. 2 (Summer 1981): 171-82.
• Konrad Gross, "The Image of French-Canada in Early English-Canadian Fiction," in English Literature of the Dominions: Writings on Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, ed. Konrad Gross and Wolfgang Klooss (Wurzburg: Konighausen & Neuman, 1981), 69-79.
• Margaret Anne Doody, "George Eliot and the Eighteenth-Century Novel," Nineteenth-Century Fiction 35 (December 1980): 260-91.
• Mary Jane Edwards, "Frances Brooke's Politics and The History of Emily Montague," in The Canadian Novel, ed. John Moss, vol. 2, Beginnings (Toronto: ECW Press, 1980): 19-27.
• Lorraine McMullen, "Frances Brooke's Early Fiction," Canadian Literature 86 (1980): 31-40.
• Lorraine McMullen, "The Divided Self," Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal 5 (1980): 53-67.
• Linda Shohet, "An Essay on The History of Emily Montague," in The Canadian Novel, ed. John Moss, vol. 2, Beginnings (Toronto: ECW Press, 1980), 19-27.
• Katherine M. Rogers, "Sensibility and Feminism: The Novels of Frances Brooke," Genre 11, no. 2 (Summer 1978): 159-71.
• Lorraine McMullen, "All's Right at Last: An Eighteenth-Century Canadian Novel," Journal of Canadian Fiction 21 (1978): 95-104.
• George Woodcock, "Possessing the Land: Notes on Canadian Fiction," in The Canadian Imagination: Dimensions of a Literary Culture, ed. David Staines (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1977), 69-96.
• James J. Talman and Ruth Talman, "The Canadas 1736-1812," in Literary History of Canada, 2nd edition, vol. 1, ed. Carl F. Klinck (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1976), 97-105.
• Lorraine McMullen, "Frances Brooke and Memoirs of the Marquis de St. Forlaix," Canadian Notes and Queries 18 (December 1976): 8-9.
• William H. New, "The Old Maid: Frances Brooke's Apprentice Feminism," Journal of Canadian Fiction 2, no. 3 (Summer 1973): 9-12.
• William H. New, "Frances Brooke's Chequered Gardens," Canadian Literature 52 (Spring 1972): 24-38.
• Gwendolyn Needham, "Mrs. Frances Brooke: Dramatic Critic," Theatre Notebook vol. 15 (Winter 1961): 47-55.
• Emile Castonguay, "Mrs. Frances Brooke ou la femme de lettres," in Cinq Femmes et nous (Québec: Belisle, 1950), 9-57.
• Desmond Pacey, "The First Canadian Novel," Dalhousie Review 26 (July 1946): 143-50.
• Bertha M. Sterns, "Early English Periodicals for Ladies," PMLA 48 (1933): 38-60.
• James R. Foster, "The Abbé Prévost and the English Novel," PMLA 42 (1927): 443-64.
• Charles S. Blue, "Canada's First Novelist," Canadian Magazine 58 (November 1921): 3-12.
• Thomas Gutherie Marquis, "English-Canadian Literature," in Canada and Its Provinces ed. Adam Shortt and Arthur Doughty (Toronto: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1913), 12:493-589.
• Ida Burwash, "An Old-Time Novel," Canadian Magazine 29 (January 1907): 252-56.
• James M. Lemoine, "The First Canadian Novelist, 1769," Maple Leaves 7 (1906): 239-45.

Venusian crater named in her honor

In 1985, the International Astronomical Union

International Astronomical Union

The International Astronomical Union IAU is a collection of professional astronomers, at the Ph.D. level and beyond, active in professional research and education in astronomy...

's Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature honoured Frances Moore Brooke by naming a crater after her on the surface of the planet Venus

Venus

Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...

. Brooke Crater is located at latitude 48.4° north, longitude 296.6° west, northeast of Guinevere Planitia. Its diameter is approximately 22.9 kilometers.

Further reading

See also Mary Jane Edwards, 'Brooke, Frances', in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

External links

• Rebecca Garwood, author biography of Frances Brooke (1724-1789) at www.chawton.org
• Frances Brooke: An overview
• Selected bibliography: Frances Moore Brooke by Jessica Smith and Paula Backscheider
• Digitized Correspondence with Richard Gifford, Houghton Library, Harvard University