This is an alphabetical list of authors who published at Minerva Press, or with William Lane before he coined the name, between the founding of the press in 1790 and 1820 or so when Lane's successor, A. K. Newman, dropped "Minerva" from the company title.
Minerva Press has been, and continues to be, a subject of considerable interest for scholars of print and popular cultures, women's writing, and the Romantic period.[2] There is also a market for modern reissues of novels from Minerva and other Gothic authors: Valancourt Books has reissued a number of Minerva titles and Broadview Press has produced several scholarly editions of early Gothic novels. Many of Minerva's authors remain obscure, however, as they published anonymously or under pseudonyms. Please note that many of these attributions remain uncertain and new scholarship[3] continues to emerge.
Anonymous: a significant proportion of Minerva Press titles, such as The Animated Skeleton (1798),[4] were published either anonymously or under pseudonyms.[5]
Leslie Armstrong (fl.1806): one novel published by Minerva: The Anglo-Saxons (1806)[6]
Lieut. Arnold (fl.1808–1810): three novels published by Minerva, including The British Admiral (1808)[6]
Thomas Ashe (1770–1835): published one novel with Minerva[7]
Eaton Stannard Barrett (1786–1820): one novel with Minerva, The Metropolis; or, A Cure for Gaming[7]
James Barton (fl.1804): author of Honorina (1804)[6][7]
Amelia Beauclerc (fl.1810s): author of at least eight novels between 1810 and 1820,[6][8] six published with Minerva[7]
Nugent Bell (pseud? fl.1817): Alexena published by Minerva in 1817.[7][9]
Anna Maria Bennett (c.1750 – 1808): author of half a dozen novels between 1795 and 1806, one of which, Vicissitudes Abroad (1806), was published by Minerva.[6]
Elizabeth Bennett (fl.1816–1819): published two novels with Minerva, including Emily (1819)[6][7]
John Brereton Birch (fl.1797): translator of The Cousins of Schiras (1797)[6]
Elizabeth Bonhôte (née Mapes; 1744–1818): author of at least nine novels between 1773 and 1810[6]
Joseph Bounden (fl.1805–1824): poet and novelist; published Murderer (1808) with Minerva[6][7]
Louise Marguerite Brayer de Saint-Léon?: The Monk of the Grotto (1800) (authorship uncertain)[7]
Marianne Breton (fl.1817): The Wife of Fitzalice (1817)[7]
James Norris Brewer (c.1777 – 1829): published An Old Family Legend (1811) and four other novels with Minerva[6]
Sarah Draper (fl.1796): author of The Memoirs of the Princess of Zell (1796)[6]
François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil (1761–1819): prolific French novelist and playwright whose work was frequently translated into English. Minerva published four titles.[6][7][14]
Francis Dudley (fl.1810): author of Amoroso (1810)[6]
E. M. Foster (fl.1795–1797): published fourteen novels, five of them with Minerva[7]
Joseph Fox, Jr (fl.1791–1810): published three novels[6]
Sophia L. Frances (fl.1806–1809): published at least five novels, three with Minerva. Her work was formerly attributed to Francis Lathom.[6][7][17]
Fleuron (ornamental typography) used by W. Lane for Oliver Goldsmith's The Bee, a select collection of essays (1790)
G
Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis (1746–1830): According to Montague Summers, her novel The Poetical Travels of Eugenius and Antonia was translated from the French by Harriet Jones and published by Minerva in 1820,[6] though only one novel, The Impertinent Wife (1806), is mentioned in British Fiction 1800–1829.[7]
Sarah Green (fl.1790–1825): published seventeen, possibly eighteen novels, at least six with Minerva; rumours, since discredited, that the name was a pseudonym to hide the gender of the author[6][7]
Griffiths ap Griffiths: The Sons of St. David (1816)[7]
Susannah Gunning (née Minifie; 1740–1800): published with Minerva later in her career.[18] There remains some confusion as to the authorship of some titles between Minifie and her sister and sometime collaborator, Margaret Minifie.
H
E.H.H. (fl.1819): author of The Highlander (1819)[6][7]
Jane Harvey (fl.1802–1828): author of over a dozen novels, five with Minerva, as well as poetry and other works.[7]
Caroline Harwood (fl.1810): author of The Castle of Vivaldi (1810)[6]
H. H. Hasworth (fl.1802): author of Lady of the Cave (1802)[6][7]
Ann Julia Hatton (pseud "Ann of Swansea"; née Kemble, then Curtis; 1764–1838): Between 1810 and 1831 she published fourteen novels "by no means lacking in quality",[6] at least eleven with for Minerva Press.[7]
C. D. Haynes (later Golland; fl.1818–1841): four novels with Minerva[6][7]
Mary Anne Hedge (fl.1820–1822): published at least one title with Minerva; author of other novels, poetry, and educational texts[6]
Elizabeth Helme (died c.1814): successful and prolific novelist, educational writer, and translator[6]
J. Hemet (fl.1802): translator of Odd Enough to Be Sure! (Lafontaine, 1802)[6]
William B. Hewetson (fl.1808–1809): novelist and translator[6]
Mary Hill (fl.1809–1813): author of Anselmo; or, The Day of Trial (1813)[6][7]
Augusta Ann Hirst (fl.1807): author of Helen; or, Domestic Occurrences (1807)[19]
Barbara Hofland (née Wreakes; then Hoole; 1770–1844): author of sixty-six or so works, eight with Minerva[7]
Mr Holder (fl.1798): author of Secluded Man (1798)[6]
Margaret Holford (1757–1834): her works are sometimes confused with those of her daughter Margaret Holford. Both authors published anonymously.
Margaret Holford (later Hobson; 1778–1852): her works are sometimes confused with those of her mother Margaret Holford. Both authors published anonymously.
Anthony Frederick Holstein (pseud.; fl.1808–1815): published at least ten novels with Minerva[6][7]
J. P. Hunt (fl.1809): author of Iron Mask (1809)[6]
I
Mrs Iliffe (née Palmer; fl.1808–1813): author of The Prior Claim (1813); also a poet[6]
Mrs Issacs (fl.1801–1820): author of over half a dozen novels, two of which she published with Minerva[7][23]
J
Frances Jacson (1754–1842): Jacson published anonymously and there have been questions about attribution. Her first two novels were published with Minerva.
Mrs Johnson (fl.1786–1787): author of Juliana (1786) and two other novels.[6]
Isabella Kelly (née Fordyce; later Hedgeland; 1759–1857): published ten novels, several with Minerva, as well as poetry and educational writings
Johanson Kidderslaw: Swedish author whose novel Swedish Mysteries, or Hero of the Mines was translated by Anna Marie MacKenzie[25] and published by Minerva.[4][26] Montague Summers identifies MacKenzie as the author.[6]
Sophia King (later Fortnum; born c.1781): author of five novels, one published with Minerva.
Title page of Sophia King's Cordelia or A Romance of Real Life (Minerva Press, 1799)
Agnes Lancaster (fl.1816): published one novel with Minerva[6][7]
Sarah Lansdell (fl.1796): author of one novel, Manfredi (1796)[6][20][27]
Francis Lathom (1774–1832): Author of The Castle of Ollada (1795),[4]The Impenetrable Secret, Find it Out! (1805),[4]The Mysterious Freebooter (1806),[4]Italian Mysteries (1820),[4]The One-Pound Note (1820),[4] and seven other Minerva titles, Lathom published his first novel when he was seventeen.[6] His The Midnight Bell (1798), published in the second edition by Minerva, was one of the seven "horrid novels" mentioned in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.
Thomas Pike Lathy (born 1771): author of at least four Minerva novels, including Love, Hatred, and Revenge. A Swiss Romance (1809)[6]
Jemima Layton (formerly Plumptre; fl.1816–1820): author of two novels[6][7]
Michel-Théodore Leclercq (fl.1800): The Invisible Man (1800)[7]
Mrs Leslie (fl.1801–1806): author of two Minerva novels[7][28]
Mrs Llewwellyn (fl.1813): author of Read It and Give It a Name (1813)[6]
Charles Lucas (fl.1800): author of The Infernal Quixote (1801)[29] and one other Minerva title, other novels, sermons, and poetry[6]
Mr Lyttleton (fl.1801–1805): author of Fiasco, Count of Lavagne (1805) and five other novels with Minerva[6][7]
Fleuron (ornamental typography) used by Minerva Press for J. Moser's The Hermit of Caucasus (1796)
M
Anna Maria Mackenzie (née Wight; previously Cox, then Johnson; pseud. Ellen of Exeter; fl.1782-1811): prolific novelist and translator who published at least two titles with Minerva[6][7][20][25][30]
Miriam Malden: published Hope (1813) with Minerva[7][31][32]
Mrs Martin (fl.1798–1830): published at least two novels with Minerva [6][7][33]
Richard Mathew (fl.1814): one title with Minerva[7]
Eliza Kirkham Mathews (née Kirkham Strong; 1772–1802): A prolific writer with over twenty publications, there have been attribution issues with some of her work. At least one title published with Minerva[7]
Charlotte Matthew (fl.1793–1807): author of Introspection (1801), three other novels, and poems[6][34][35]
Caroline Maxwell (fl.1808–1828): one title with Minerva[6][7]
Elizabeth Meeke (1761–1826): published as "Gabrielli" (pseud.) or "Mrs Meeke"; identity in question until 2013; also did translations from French; highly prolific.[6][7]
Theodore Melville (fl.1803–1809): author of Irish Chieftain (1809)[6][7]
Alicia M'Gennis (fl.1817): one title with Minerva[6][7]
Anna Millikin (1764– after 1849): published Rival Chiefs (1805) with Minerva
Margaret Minifie (1734–1803): there remains some confusion as to the authorship of some titles between Minifie and her sister, and sometime collaborator, Susannah Gunning
Edward Montague (fl.1805–1808): author of The Castle of Berry Pomeroy (1806)[4][7]
Edward Moore (fl.1811–1817): two titles with Minerva[7]
Marianne Moore (fl.1802–1803): author of Lascelles (1802) and at least one other title[6][7][36][37]
Mr Nicholson (fl.1787–1789): author of Orlando and Seraphina (1787) and at least three other titles[6]
O
Orlando (pseud; fl.1807–1809): author of A Summer By the Sea (1807) and The Chamber of Death (1809)[6]
Fleuron (ornamental typography) used by Minerva Press for Eliza Parsons' The Girl of the Mountains (1797)Fleuron (ornamental typography) used by Minerva Press for Bell [Annabella] Plumptre's Montgomery (1796)Fleuron (ornamental typography) used by W. Lane for Samuel Jackson Pratt'sCharles and Charlotte (1777)
P
F. H. P.: author of The Castle of Caithness (1802)[7]
John Palmer, Jr (1776–1809): author of The Mystery of the Black Tower (1796)[4] and half a dozen other titles[6]
Emma Parker (Emma de Lisle, pseud.; fl.1809–1817): some attribution issues when her pseudonym used to publish another's novels. Two titles[7][38]
Mr. Potter (fl.1790): Frederic; or, The Libertine (1790)[6]
Samuel Jackson Pratt (pseud. Courtney Melmoth; 1749–1814): prolific scandal-ridden former clergyman and author of Charles and Charlotte (1777)[41]
Mrs Purcell (fl.1820): author of The Orientalist (1820)[6]
R
Mary Ann Radcliffe (1746–1818): feminist author. Her authorship of several Minerva titles has been questioned. Minerva would seem to have exploited the similarity of her name to that of bestselling author Ann Radcliffe.[6]
Eliza Ratcliffe (fl.1808): author of The Mysterious Baron (1808)[6]
Jean Baptiste Joseph Innocent Philadelphe Regnault-Warin (1775–1844): French writer who published translations with Minerva; sometimes wrote as Saint-Edmé[6]
Mrs. Rice (fl.1803–1807): author of The Deserted Wife (1803) and Monteith (1806)[6][7]
John Robinson (fl.1794–1806): author "remarkable for the murderous catastrophe of his pieces"[6]
Maria Elizabeth Robinson (1775–1818): author of The Shrine of Bertha (1794), an epistolary novel
"R. S." (pseud, possibly Richard Sickelmore): author of The New Monk (1798),[4] a satire of M. G. Lewis's The Monk (1796) "even more grotesque and shocking" than the original.[43]
Richard Sickelmore, Jun. (fl.1796–1809): novelist, dramatist, author of Edgar; or, The Phantom of the Castle (1798)[4] and at least one other Minerva title
Henry Siddons (1774–1815): actor and author of Reginald De Torby and the Twelve Robbers (1803)[6][7]
Mr Singer (fl.1796–1803): author of The Wanderer of the Alps (1796) and at least one other title[6][7]
Catherina Smith (fl.1807–1817): actress and author of five novels including Barozzi, or, The Venetian Sorceress (1815)[4][47] and The Caledonian Bandit (1811)[4][6][48]
Maria Lavinia Smith (fl.1801): author of The Fugitive of the Forest (1801)[7][49]
Arthur Spenser (fl.1819): author of Iskander (1819)[6][7]
Christian Heinrich Spiess (1755–1799): German author whose novel The Mountain Cottager was translated by Annabella Plumptre and published by Minerva.[4] At least one other of his works was published by the press.[7][50]
Elizabeth Thomas (née Wolferstan; 1770/71–1855): Thomas has been identified as "Mrs Bridget Bluemantle", author of at least nine Minerva Press novels from 1806 to 1818, though this identification remains problematic.[6][57][58]
Anna (Harriet?) Thompson (fl.1787–1807): one title with Minerva[6][7][59][60]
William Frederick Williams (fl.1803–1805): at least four titles with Minerva[7]
Caroline von Wolzogen (née von Lengefeld) (1763–1847): German author whose novel Agnes de Lilien was translated by Mrs Showes[46] and published by Minerva.[4][7][62]
Elizabeth Wright (fl.1801): author of A Marvellous Pleasant Love Story (1801)[7][63]
↑ See, for example, Romantic textualities literature and print culture 1780-1840: Special Issue: The Minerva Press and the literary marketplace. August 2020 ISSN1748-0116doi:10.18573/romtext.76; Elizabeth Neiman, Minerva's Gothics: the politics and poetics of Romantic exchange, 1780-1820. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2019; and Gary Kelly, "The popular novel, 1790–1820," The Oxford handbook of the eighteenth-century novel, edited by James Alan Downie, 2016, ISBN9780199566747doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199566747.013.02
↑ "Frances, Sophia." The Women's Print History Project, 2019, Person ID 2733. Accessed 2022-06-09. (WPHP)
↑ Milberger, Kurt Edward, "‘The first impression, you, yourself, will buy’: The Gunninghiad, Virginius and Virginia and the art of scandal at the Minerva Press." Romantic textualities; Cardiff Iss. 23 (Summer 2020). doi:10.18573/romtext.71
↑ "Hirst, Augusta Ann" The Women's Print History Project, 2019, Person ID 2738. Accessed 2022-06-14. (WPHP)
1 2 Neiman, Elizabeth, and Christina Morin. "Re-evaluating the Minerva Press: introduction." Romantic textualties: literature and print culture, 1780-1840. Issue 23: Special Issue: The Minerva Press and the literary marketplace (Summer 2020): 15.
↑ Author of The Balance of Comfort; or The Old Maid and Married Woman, A Novel. London: Minerva Press, 1818 (Internet Archive)>, The Woman of Genius. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821 (Internet Archive)
List of biographical dictionaries Collectively, the resources at this site "provide information about any 17th-century British woman writer one could imagine."
Romantic Circles, a refereed scholarly website devoted to the study of Romantic-period literature and culture.
Sarah Green was an Irish-English author, one of the ten most prolific novelists of the first two decades of the nineteenth century.
Elizabeth Helme was a prolific English novelist, educational writer, and translator active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Martha Harley was the successful author of six Gothic novels.
Elizabeth Thomas [née Wolferstan] (1771–1855), novelist and poet, is an ambiguous figure. Details of her early life are missing, and her authorship of some of the works attributed to her has been contested due to the use of pseudonyms.
Selina Davenport was an English novelist, briefly married to the miscellanist and biographer Richard Alfred Davenport. Her eleven published novels have been recently described as "effective if stereotyped".
Emma Parker was an Anglo-Welsh novelist of whom very little is known, although her work was generally well-reviewed during her lifetime. Her epistolary novel Self-Deception explores the cultural and religious differences between the English and the French.
Mary Ann Hanway was an eighteenth-century travel writer and novelist. She has been proposed as the anonymous author of Journey to the Highlands of Scotland (1777).
Maria Susanna Cooper was an English novelist, children's author, and poet, best known for her epistolary novels. Her writing, didactic and conservative, focused on appropriate roles for daughters, wives, and mothers.
Ann Emelinda Skinn was an English novelist.
Margaret Minifie was a "a minor eighteenth-century sentimental novelist" whose career has tended to have been overshadowed by that of her sister, Susannah Gunning. A number of Minifie's works have historically been attributed to Gunning but recently, critics have sought to disentangle their two histories.
Maria Elizabeth Robinson was an author and editor. Her mother was the celebrated writer Mary Robinson, and Maria Elizabeth edited and saw Mary's unpublished works through to publication after her death.
Amelia Beauclerc was a British Gothic novelist.
Sophia Fortnum was a British Gothic novelist, and poet.
Mary Charlton, Gothic novelist and translator, was a "leading light" at the Minerva Press.
Anna Maria Mackenzie was a prolific author of popular novels active during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She was closely associated with the Minerva Press.
Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers Before Jane Austen (1986), by Dale Spender, is a foundational study for the reclamation project central to feminist literary studies in English in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Medora Gordon Byron has long been accepted as the pseudonym of "Miss Byron," a Romantic-era author of either five or eight novels, though recent scholarship has complicated that identification.
Mary Julia Young was a prolific novelist, poet, translator, and biographer, active in the Romantic period, who published the bulk of her works with market-driven publishers James Fletcher Hughes and William Lane of the Minerva Press. She is of particular interest as an example of a professional woman writer in "a market of mass novel production."
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![Fleuron (ornamental typography) used by Minerva Press for Bell [Annabella] Plumptre's Montgomery (1796) Montgomery; or, scenes in Wales. In two volumes. - Fleuron N012293-29.png](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/Montgomery%3B_or%2C_scenes_in_Wales._In_two_volumes._-_Fleuron_N012293-29.png/220px-Montgomery%3B_or%2C_scenes_in_Wales._In_two_volumes._-_Fleuron_N012293-29.png)
![Fleuron (ornamental typography) used by Minerva Press for [Anon.], Augusta Denbeigh; a novel (1795) Augusta Denbeigh; a novel. In three volumes. Fleuron N005288-2.png](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1d/Augusta_Denbeigh%3B_a_novel._In_three_volumes._Fleuron_N005288-2.png/220px-Augusta_Denbeigh%3B_a_novel._In_three_volumes._Fleuron_N005288-2.png)
