The Essay: Women Writers to Put Back on the Bookshelf

The Essay: Women Writers to put back on the Bookshelf

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Women Writers to Put Back on the Bookshelf: Charlotte Turner Smith

Charlotte Turner Smith

Women Writers to Put Back on the Bookshelf

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Women Writers to Put Back on the Bookshelf, Charlotte Turner Smith

The Romantic poet who inspired Wordsworth is profiled by Sophie Coulombeau.

Charlotte Turner Smith wrote ten novels, three poetry collections, four children's books and reshaped sonnet writing. By her death in 1803, she was in debt and out of favour.

New Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau argues that we should salute this woman who supported her family through her writing, who perfected sonnets about solitude before Wordsworth began writing his, and who explored the struggles of women and refugees in her fiction. Mother to 12 children, Charlotte Turner Smith wrote ten novels, three poetry collections and four children's books and translated French fiction.  In 1788 her first novel, Emmeline, sold 1500 copies within months but by the time of her death in 1803 her popularity had declined and she had become destitute.   

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with academics to turn their research into radio.

Producer: Robyn Read

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

New Generation Thinkers champion five early and overlooked female writers of fiction.

Five New Generation Thinkers champion early and overlooked female writers who have, nonetheless, made an important contribution to the history of fiction.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Essay

Women Writers to Put Back on the Bookshelf

Charlotte Turner Smith

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3