Talk:Annie Hall Cudlip

Annie Hall Cudlip
I don't understand why the article is headed thus. Reasons: 1. She always signed her books and stories "Annie Thomas", never "Annie Hall Cudlip." 2. I don't know any library that catalogues her as Annie Hall Cudlip. All those that I've consulted (including the Library of Congress and the British Library) catalogue her as Annie Thomas. 3. She is most likely to be looked up in relation to W. S. Gilbert. As far as I know, the (moderately extensive) Gilbertian literature always calls her Annie Thomas, never Annie Hall Cudlip. 4. The few journal articles that have been published about her literary work in recent years call her Annie Thomas, not Annie Hall Cudlip. 5. Anyone who comes across her works on Google Books or the Internet Archive will look for information about Annie Thomas. Neither website has anything at all under the name Annie Hall Cudlip.

True, millions of other people are also called Annie Thomas. But that problem can be readily avoided by heading the article "Annie Hall (Mrs. Pender Cudlip)." That's what she herself did, and what this article's public domain source did. Pelamis (talk) 01:01, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

If you feel it's justified to change the name of the page, the button to press is "More", just to the left of "Search Wikipedia". This will leave the original name as a "redirect page" to the page with the changed name. Help with correcting links to the page, where necessary, would be appreciated. Look under "What links here" to see the potential problems and alter the links in them to this page.Bmcln1 (talk) 20:02, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Pen names
I don't believe that either "Annie Thomas" or "Mrs. Pender Cudlip" can accurately be called a pen name. Annie Thomas was her maiden name; Mrs. Pender Cudlip was her married name. Pelamis (talk) 01:14, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

"Other names", perhaps? Bmcln1 (talk) 19:58, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Inaccuracy
The article currently states: "Many of her earliest novels were considered highly controversial and dealt with subjects such as the sexuality of young girls[citation needed] and illegitimate pregnancy.[5]" Footnote 5 refers to page 165 of Sutherland's Stanford Companion, but that actually says only: "Some of her novels, such as False Colours (1865), the study of an unwed mother, were found improper by her contemporaries."--and even that isn't quite correct (False Colours isn't a "study of an unwed mother" like, say, Mrs. Gaskell's Ruth; it's a study of people who are thought to be of illegitimate birth--one of the standard plot subjects of 19th century fiction: think of Jane Austen's Emma, Dickens's Bleak House, Thackeray's Henry Esmond, etc., etc., etc.). I would say that: (1) only one of her many books deals with illegitimacy (and none deal with "illegitimate pregnancy"); (2) "the sexuality of young girls" features in her books only in the sense that it features in every novel by Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, and just about every subsequent female 19th-century novelist; (3) only a few of her books provoked any controversy at all; (4) she is rare among Victorian novelists in that none of her books was ever "highly" controversial (in the way that Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit, Mrs. Gaskell's Ruth, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, etc., were; it was an era when readers were quick to take offence). Nineteenth century reviews of many of her novels are readily available on the internet; 99% of them didn't imply that there was anything controversial about her work. (Indeed, most reviews of False Colours didn't even mention the illegitimacy plot-device; that's how commonplace it was.) Even Mrs. Oliphant, the great opponent of "sensation novels," censured Annie Thomas less than any other novelist of this type, noting that "Miss Thomas... has freed herself to some extent from the traditions of her school" (Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 102 [Sept. 1867]: 262). Pelamis (talk) 01:35, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Please enter your alteration, with a reference. I'm sure you've looked into it thoroughly. Bmcln1 (talk) 19:54, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Possible inaccuracy
The article currently states: "Major William Price Drury, a Royal Marine... wrote some nautical novels at the end of the 20th century." Shouldn't this have been "beginning of the 20th century" (or perhaps "end of the 19th century")? I know nothing about Drury, but his Wikipedia page states that all his books were published by 1939. Pelamis (talk) 01:46, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Please make the alteration, then. Bmcln1 (talk) 19:54, 28 July 2017 (UTC)