‘The first impression, you, yourself, will buy’: The Gunninghiad, Virginius and Virginia and the art of scandal at the Minerva Press

Milberger, Kurt Edward 2020. ‘The first impression, you, yourself, will buy’: The Gunninghiad, Virginius and Virginia and the art of scandal at the Minerva Press. Romantic Textualities (23) , pp. 39-59. 10.18573/romtext.71

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Abstract

In the wake of a personal scandal that Horace Walpole dubbed 'The Gunninghiad', Susannah Gunning returned to literary writing after some years’ absence from the scene. The two works she published with William Lane’s Minerva Press in 1792, Anecdotes of the Delborough Family and Virginius and Virginia. A Poem, in Six Parts. From the Roman History, demonstrate both Gunning’s artistic range and Lane’s marketing genius. Together, Gunning and Lane capitalised on the Gunninghiad scandal in an attempt to rehabilitate Gunning’s reputation as a writer and fill the coffers of the press. This article re-examines Gunning’s undervalued literary career to argue that publishing with Lane afforded her opportunities to rewrite the scandal of which she’d been a part, experiment with literary genres she had yet to explore, and profit from what she lived and wrote.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D204 Modern History H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0441 Literary History Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources > Z004 Books. Writing. Paleography
Publisher:	Cardiff University Press
ISSN:	1748-0116
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	16 November 2020
Date of Acceptance:	8 January 2019
Last Modified:	04 May 2023 23:44
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/136385

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