The claims of literature: women applicants to the royal literary fund, 1790-1810*

Abstract

This article examines the pleas made by women applicants to the Royal Literary Fund in the first two decades of the charity's history. The Fund, which provided financial aid to distressed writers and their dependents, sought to reinstate the man of letters in the face of criticism from political economists such as Adam Smith. Its construction of a virulently masculine model of authorship can be seen as part of a wider trend to professionalise the "work of writing", at the cost of marginalising female literary endeavour as amateurism. Yet, the writings of female claimants reveal as much opposition to this trend as they provide evidence to support it. Through an examination of their applications and voluminous fictional output, this article demonstrates how these popular, yet commonly derided women appropriated the gendered language of labour, genius and utility for themselves, in order to construct an alternative and distinctly feminine model of authorship