Selina Davenport

Italian Vengeance and English Forbearance; a Romance

London:  A. K. Newman, 1828.

 

Biographical Sketch of Selina Davenport

Born Selina Granville Wheler on 27 June 1779, the details of Selina Davenport's life remain largely uncertain. Much of what we do know about Davenport comes from her Royal Literary Fund Case File, as well as from letters written by Elizabeth Gaskell, who was a friend of Davenport.

Davenport was born either in London or Middlesex, to Captain Charles Granville Wheler. Because her maternal heritage is unknown and the exact location of her birth is vague, there has been speculation as to her illegitimacy. She may have spent her childhood in Durham, under the care of her aunt, Mary-Garway Wheler and her husband John Taylor. As a girl, she befriended the sisters Anna Maria and Jane Porter, "both later to become successful writers in the early 1800s" (Watkins). Jane in particular was close to Davenport, the two remaining friends until Portor's death in 1850. She reportedly aided Davenport both with her writing and her finances.

On 6 September 1800, at the age of 21, Davenport married Richard Alfred Davenport-writer, scholar, and protégé to Edmund Burke-apparently in order "to 'disoblige' her family" (Watkins). The couple had two daughters, Mary, born in 1803, and Theodora, born in 1806. Davenport left her husband "for 'sufficient reasons'" around 1810 (Blain 267). The split was evidently "acrimonious," yet the two never officially divorced, nor did either remarry; instead, each claimed to have been widowed, and Davenport later assumed the name Selina Granville (Watkins). Davenport complained that his wife "saddled him with debts of £150 incurred in running a school" and there is evidence in his writing to suggest his "dislike for educated women" (Blain 267). Considering the progressively minded themes of Davenport's work in contrast with her husband's relationship to Burke, and presumably his agreement with Burke's anti-Jacobin sentiments, it is of little wonder that the two separated. Likewise, having herself married out of familial obligation, a marriage which produced disastrous results, it is of no surprise that Italian Vengeance and English Forbearance concentrates so heavily on themes vindicating the companionate marriage and the need for women's education. After separating from her husband, Davenport claimed he left her with nothing, and she began writing in order to support herself and her two daughters.

Davenport authored a total of eleven "effective if stereotyped novels," her early works published by the Minerva Press, and her later by A. K. Newman & Co. (Blain 267). In an 1850 letter to the Royal Literary Fund, Elizabeth Gaskell wrote that Davenport's works "'seem to me not without merit,'" a complimentary statement, of course, albeit rather backhanded nonetheless (Foster x).

In addition to writing novels, Davenport and her daughters attempted to support themselves financially in a multitude of business ventures, "including running a coffee house and then a dance school, [and] teaching music" (Watkins). She died on 14 July 1859, at the age of 80, following years of increasing poverty and ill health.

SOURCES

Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, Eds. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.

Chapple, J.A.V. and Arthur Pollard, eds., The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.

Foster, Shirley. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Literary Life. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Watkins, Louise. "Corvey 'Adopt an Author' Biography of Selina Davenport." May 1998. The Corvey Project at Sheffield Hallam University. 23 April 2006.
<http://www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cs/corvey/corinne/Corinne%20authors/1Davenport/BioDavenport.htm>.

-- Prepared by Jaclyn Cruikshank, University of Nebraska, April 2006.
© Jaclyn Cruikshank, 2006.