Elizabeth Gunning (writer)
Elizabeth Gunning | |
---|---|
![]() 1796 portrait | |
Born | 1769 Northern Britain |
Died | 1823 (aged 53–54) Long Melford, Suffolk, England |
Other names | Miss Gunning; Mrs. Plunkett |
Occupation(s) | Novelist and translator |
Spouse |
James Plunkett (m. 1803) |
Parent(s) | Susannah Gunning and John Gunning |
Elizabeth Gunning (1769–1823) was a novelist and translator of French into English. In the 1790s, she was the subject of a pamphlet war related to a rumoured relationship with Lord Blandford. Gunning and her mother were accused of creating a series of forged letters, purportedly by Blandford and his father, the duke of Marlborough, which were published as evidence that Blandford had proposed marriage to Gunning. After the scandal, Gunning followed in the footsteps of her mother, the novelist Susannah Gunning, with a prolific writing career. She published twelve works of fiction and five translations between 1794 and 1815. Gunning married James Plunkett, an Irish military officer, in 1803 and continued publishing with both "Mrs. Plunkett" and "Miss Gunning" on the title page of her works. She died in 1823.
Biography
[edit]Early life
[edit]Gunning was the only child of the writer Susannah Gunning and the military officer John Gunning (1742–1797).[1] She was born in 1769 in northern Britain, where her father was deputy adjutant general, and was raised in Edinburgh, Scotland.[1] During the American Revolutionary War her father served abroad; when he returned, the family relocated to Langford Court in Lower Langford, Somerset.[1] In June 1788, they moved to London, renting houses in St James's Place and Twickenham.[1]
Rumoured engagement
[edit]Two of Gunning's paternal aunts made surprising marriages to members of the aristocracy: Maria became the countess of Coventry and Elizabeth became duchess first of Hamilton and then of Argyll.[1][2] They were somewhat notorious for their beauty and social climbing, and Gunning was often seen as following in their footsteps with her own pursuit of an aristocratic husband.[3] When the Gunnings moved to London, some rumours circulated that Elizabeth was also likely to make an elevated marriage, to her cousin George Campbell, heir to the duke of Argyll.[1] These rumours were superseded in 1791 by rumours about her relationship with George Spencer-Churchill, heir to the duke of Marlborough, at that time known as the marquess of Blandford.[1][4]

The real events of Gunning's relationship with Blandford are difficult to discern.[4][5] Gunning told her close friends in the autumn of 1790 that she was engaged to Blandford.[4] In February 1791, her father wrote to Blandford's father out of concern that no wedding date had been set;[4] later that month, he ejected Gunning and her mother from his household, apparently furious about a scheme related to the engagement.[1] They swore affidavits of innocence and moved in with Blandford's grandmother, the duchess of Bedford, who defended them.[1][4] Speculation about Gunning and Blandford's relationship was a matter of public debate for months.[4] The writer Horace Walpole was among the commentators as events unfolded,[1] and the satirist James Gillray produced three caricatures of the Gunnings.[5] Letters purportedly from Blandford and his father were published as evidence that Blandford had cruelly jilted Gunning, then exposed as forgeries.[1][4][5] The forged letters were evidently intended to publicly pressure Blandford into the marriage;[1] other less probable rumours suggested that the letters were instead intended to prompt a jealous offer of marriage from Gunning's cousin, or to break off an existing engagement with that cousin to spare Gunning's father the cost of her dowry.[6] The scandal turned against the forgers.[1] Gunning's mother published a 147-page pamphlet blaming her husband for trying to pin the capital offense of forgery on his innocent daughter.[7][8] It related events novelistically,[7] and was reprinted several times due to its popular sales.[9] At the time, Gunning and her mother were usually blamed for the forgery, though today historians consider it plausible that Gunning's father was responsible.[1] Gunning and her mother temporarily relocated to France to escape the scandal.[5]
Writing
[edit]
Gunning began her career as an author in 1794, and ultimately published eight novels, five translations from French, and four children's books.[3][10] Her first novel, The Packet (1794), begins with a preface claiming that she was a reluctant amateur pressured into writing,[11] but the literary historian Pam Perkins argues that this self-presentation is a marketing cliché.[12] Perkins describes Gunning as highly professional in her management of her career.[13] Unlike many writers who wrote "on speculation" — completing a manuscript first and then attempting to sell it to a publisher — Gunning secured a contract before beginning to write The Packet.[13] When she wrote more than the contracted four volumes, she removed the extra material to be sold separately as her second book, Lord Fitzhenry.[13] The vast majority of novels in this period were published anonymously,[14] but The Packet is published with Gunning's highly-recognizable name on the title page, and even after her marriage, her novels continue to point out that "Mrs. Plunkett" should be known to readers as "Miss Gunning".[12]
All of Gunning's works were reprinted and pirated frequently during her life, indicating a successful career as a writer.[3] Perkins says: "Hers was not a dazzling literary career, like Burney's or Smith's, but it was solid and respectable".[11] After her death, however, her works were soon forgotten.[3] Isobel Grundy's assessment of her ouvre is mixed: "Elizabeth Gunning's early novels are, like her mother's, sentimental, with heavy-footed humour, trite moralizing, a self-consciously elaborate style, and intense class-consciousness. Each woman wrote more interestingly, with more criticism of society, later in life."[1] Gunning's most celebrated French translation was of The Plurality of Worlds by Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, first written in 1686.[3]
Later life and death
[edit]Gunning's father died in 1799, and she received a substantial inheritance.[11] In 1803, Gunning married Major James Plunkett of Kinnaird, County Roscommon.[15][16][1] They had several children, including a son named Gunning Plunkett.[16]
Gunning died on 20 July 1823, at Long Melford, Suffolk.[1] Her death notice in The Gentleman's Magazine described her as "a lady endowed with many virtues, and considerable accomplishments."[17]
Works
[edit]Novels
[edit]- The Packet, 4 vols. 12mo, London, 1794.
- Lord Fitzhenry, 3 vols. 12mo, London, 1794.
- The Foresters, 4 vols. 12mo, London, 1796. This is an original novel which claims to be a translation from French.[3]
- The Orphans of Snowdon, 3 vols. 12mo, London, 1797.
- The Gipsey Countess, 5 vols. 12mo, London, 1799.
- The Village Library, 18mo, London, 1802.
- The Farmer's Boy, 4 vols. 12mo, London, 1802.
- The War-Office, 3 vols. 12mo, London, 1802.
- Family Stories; or Evenings at my Grandmother's, &c., 2 vols. 12mo, London, 1802.
- A Sequel to Family Stories, &c., 12mo, London, 1802.
- The Exile of Erin, 3 vols. 12mo, London, 1808.
- The Man of Fashion: a Tale of Modern Times, 2 vols. 12mo, London, 1815.
Translations from French
[edit]- Memoirs of Madame de Barneveldt, 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1796.[3]
- The Wife with two Husbands: a tragi-comedy, in three acts [and in prose]. Translated from the French (of Pixèrecourt), 8vo, London, 1803. She unsuccessfully offered this, with an opera based upon it, to Covent Garden and Drury Lane.[3]
- Fontenelles' Plurality of Worlds, 12mo, London, 1803.[3]
- Malvina, by Madame C—— (i.e. Cottin), 4 vols. 12mo, London, 1804.[3]
- Dangers through Life; or, The Victim of Seduction, London: J. Ebers, 1810. Gunning presented this translation of Claude Joseph Dorat's Les Malheurs de l'inconstance (1772) as her own original work.[10]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Grundy 2004.
- ^ Perkins 1996, p. 96.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Derbyshire 2024.
- ^ a b c d e f g Perkins 1996, p. 85.
- ^ a b c d Eckert 2022, pp. 1–2.
- ^ Perkins 1996, pp. 85–86.
- ^ a b Perkins 1996, pp. 86–87.
- ^ "A letter from Mrs. Gunning, addressed to His Grace the Duke of Argyll". HathiTrust. Retrieved 6 July 2025.
- ^ Eckert 2022, p. 162.
- ^ a b "The English Novel, 1800–1829 & 1830–1836: Update 7 (August 2009–July 2020)". Romantic Textualities. 20 August 2020. Retrieved 22 July 2025.
- ^ a b c Perkins 1996, p. 83.
- ^ a b Perkins 1996, pp. 94–95.
- ^ a b c Perkins 1996, p. 94-95.
- ^ Raven 2000, p. 41.
- ^ "Marriages". The Gentleman's magazine. Vol. 94. 1803. p. 1251.
Major Plunkett, to Miss Gunning, authoress of several interesting publications.
- ^ a b Burke, John (1832). A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage. Vol. 1.
- ^ The Gentleman's Magazine, August 1823. Vol. 93. 1823 – via Internet Archive.
Works cited
[edit]- Derbyshire, Val (2024). "Gunning, Elizabeth". The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Romantic-Era Women's Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. pp. 1–4. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-11945-4_232-1. ISBN 978-3-030-11945-4.
- Eckert, Lindsey (17 June 2022). The Limits of Familiarity: Authorship and Romantic Readers. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-1-68448-390-7.
- Grundy, Isobel (2004). "Gunning [married name Plunkett], Elizabeth (1769–1823)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11745. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- Perkins, Pam (1996). "The Fictional Identities of Elizabeth Gunning". Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. 15 (1): 96. doi:10.2307/463975. ISSN 0732-7730.
- Raven, James (2000). "Historical Introduction: The Novel Comes of Age". The English Novel 1770–1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles. Vol. I: 1770–1790. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-818317-4.
External links
[edit]- 1769 births
- 1823 deaths
- 18th-century British women writers
- 18th-century English novelists
- 18th-century English people
- 18th-century English translators
- 18th-century English women writers
- 19th-century English novelists
- 19th-century English translators
- 19th-century English women writers
- English women non-fiction writers
- English women novelists
- People from Long Melford