A writer and entrepreneur, Sarah Wilkinson (1779-1831) teetered between middle class and penury for most of her life. Arguably one of the most prolific writers of gothic chapbooks or bluebooks, Wilkinson was known to author over 100 short works and 29 volumes of fiction (Hoeveler, 2015). At least half were Gothic, many riffing off of Radcliffe, but also included text books, children’s books, periodical pieces (Hughes, 2012, p 742).
Wilkinson experienced some success with the publication of her novel The Thatched Cottage, which was subscribed to by the Duchess of Gloucester, which she leveraged into ownership of a circulating library. The library was initial supported by Lady Charlotte Finch. However, the circulating library would fail around 1812, forcing her to take in boarders and return into churning out chapbooks and bluebooks, which were largely seen as derivative at best. She would frequently, during different periods of her life, be a teacher or day school founder, but also several times applied for financial support from the Royal Literary Fund. She was married briefly, to a man who died in 1818. They had one daughter, Amelia, who had been born in 1807.
In 1820, she continued to struggle while hosting a parlour shop that also sold children’s books. It was during this time she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Wilkinson would barely stave off debtor’s prison, and with support from the Royal Literary Fund was able to get two surgical operations at St. George’s Hospital around 1824.
An account of her initial experience trying to make it as an author appeared anonymously in the Tell Tale Magazine (1803). She of finding herself alone in London with only five guineas left to survive, “scribbling night and day” to finish a four volume novel only to be told by a publisher that no one read novels any longer. She then describes a sort of slavery to the chapbook mills to eek out a living, and urges other women to chose a more stable career than that of a writer (Potter, 2005).
She would ultimately die in 1831 in the St. Margaret’s Workhouse (Hughes, 2012).
I think Wilkinson is likely one of the authors Austen pokes fun at in Northanger Abbey, but she is also an example of a woman hustling to make a living in the Regency era, and how fickle success could be.
Hoeveler, D. (2015). “Sarah Wilkinson: Female Gothic Entrepreneur.” Retrieved: https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=gothic_scholar
Hughes, W. et al (2012). The Encyclopedia of the Gothic. John Wiley & Sons.
Potter F.J. (2005) The Romance of Real Life: Sarah Wilkinson. In: The History of Gothic Publishing, 1800–1835. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230512726_6
