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Laetitia Matilda Hawkins (baptized 8 August 1759[1] – 22 November 1835) was an English novelist, associated with Twickenham. She was the daughter of Sir John Hawkins, an acquaintance of Samuel Johnson.[2]

Hawkins was an outspoken yet highly conservative British woman author. In 1793, she published the inflammatory Letters on the Female Mind, Its Powers and Pursuits. Addressed to Miss H.M. Williams, with particular reference to Her Letters from France, a two-volume attack on Helen Maria Williams's Continental political writings in her Letters Written in France. Hawkins asserted that 'every female politician is a hearsay politician'.[3] The Analytical Review, a liberal paper, described Hawkins' Letters as a 'rant [...] written with much ill temper'.[4]

She wrote at least four novels, including The Countess and Gertrude (1811), and she also acted as an amanuensis for her father. Her work was published anonymously until after Sir John died in 1789.

Beryl Bainbridge based a character in her novel According to Queeney on Hawkins.

Hawkins is one of the "lost" women writers listed by Dale Spender in Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers Before Jane Austen.

Works

Notes

  1. ^ Bertram Hylton Davis. A proof of eminence: the life of Sir John Hawkins. Indiana University Press, 1972. Page 62.
  2. ^ Pat Rogers (1996). The Samuel Johnson Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 176–. ISBN 978-0-313-29411-2.
  3. ^ Laetitia Matilda Hawkins, Letters on the Female Mind, Its Powers and Pursuits. Addressed to Miss H.M. Williams, with particular reference to Her Letters from France, 2vols (London: Printed for Hookman and Carpenter, Bond-Street, 1793) I, p. 110.
  4. ^ Analytical Review, or History of Literature, Domestic and Foreign, 15 [London: J. Johnson, 1793], p. 527.

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