Jane Harvey

Jane Harvey.  Brougham Castle:  a Novel

1816.

Biographical Sketch of Jane Harvey

Jane Harvey was born in 1776 to Elizabeth and Lawrance H. Harvey who lived in Barnard Castle. She was baptized in Gateshead. She is believed to be related to Margaret H. Harvey, author of a long poem and melodrama (pub. 1814, 1822) about the history of the Percy family in the sixteenth century.

The Harveys ran a circulating library in Tynemouth. She seems to have been concerned with women's issues and worker's rights. Her first published work, a Sentimental Tour of that city, appeared as by "A Young Lady" (1794). Harvey published this work by subscription; it included discussion of politics and women in the sections "Merchant's Court" and "Tea." Her last work, published in 1841, was called Fugitive Pieces, and showed political support for striking Tyneside keelmen and exploited female tailors.

Harvey wrote in many different genres over the course of her literary career, including poetry and children's literature in the form of verse and tales. In 1797, Poems on Various Subjects was published; in itHarvey praised Charlotte Smith and other female writers. This publication was followed by approximately one dozen anonymous novels which were published as follows.

Minerva Castle, 1802
Warkfield Castle, 1802
The Castle of Tynemouth, 1806
The Governor of Belleville, 1808
Ethelia, 1810
The Mourtray Family, 1810
Memoirs of an Author, 1812
Records of a Noble Family, 1814
Brougham Castle, 1816
Anything but What You Expect, 1819
Singularity, 1822
Mountalyth, 1823
The Ambassador's Secretary, 1828

Harvey's work was not reviewed very often but there is some existing criticism. Harvey's character development seems to have improved over the course of her career. In 1806, a review of The Castle of Tynemouth in The Literary Journal accused Harvey of writing characters with little depth. However, in 1812 The British Critic published a review of Memoirs of an Author which praised her characters as "well drawn." She also received a favorable review of the same novel in 1815 by the Critical Review, saying that they "recommend this author's experience to all who unhappily labor under the cacoethes scribendi." By the time she writes Brougham Castle in 1816, her primary characters seem fairly well developed. There is quite a contrast between the "pedantic husband (hard words and Greek military history) and down-to-earth wife (dialect and local gossip)…"

SOURCES

British Critic, 39 (Mar. 1812), 310.
Critical Review, s5, v2 (July 1815), 104.
Garside, Peter et al. "Author Index: Titles written by 'Jane Harvey'". British Fiction 1800-1829: A Database of Production Circulation and Reception. 2004. 27 April 2006. <http://www.british-fiction.cf.ac.uk/authorTitles.asp?author=338>
"Jane Harvey." Myers Literary Guide. Centre for Northern Studies. 27 April 2006. <http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/faculties/art/humanities/cns/m-harvey.html>
"Jane Harvey." The Feminist Companion To literature in English: women writers from the Middle Ages to the present. Ed.Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy. New Haven: Yale UP, 1990. 497.
Literary Journal, a Review ns, v2 (Nov 1806) 552.

-- Prepared by Willa Bitney, University of Nebraska, April 2006.
© Willa Bitney, 2006.