Talk:Honora Sneyd/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: BenLinus1214 (talk · contribs) 03:04, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Second on my "to review" list, after Samuel Lightfoot Flournoy (West Virginia lawyer). Johanna (aka BenLinus1214)talk to me!see my work 03:04, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Comments

Lead
✅
 * If possible, could you just explain your reasoning for the article's extensive explanatory footnotes? I'm not doubting their importance--I have no problem with them per se--but I would just like a few words explaining why you chose this method of communication of information.
 * Not sure what you mean, exactly - I am going to assume you wanted those comments here, not in the Lead?
 * Footnotes are common in biographies, e.g. sources for this page
 * While many WP editors mix them in with references, that makes a very untidy appearance, so I prefer to separate them
 * Inconsistencies in the literature require an explanation
 * Incorporating them in the text would break up the narrative


 * Look again at the second paragraph of the lead for sentence structure, especially that first sentence of the para.
 * Not sure exactly what you refer to here, but rephrased


 * I would also recommend putting a little more of what's in the "work" section in the lead.
 * OK, done--Michael Goodyear (talk) 07:41, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Life
✅
 * Let's talk about the heading system for the beginning part of this section: I think that 1756-1771 is also her "early life", and I see two possible solutions (in order of preference on my part):
 * You retitle this whole part "Early life and adoption by the Seward family, 1756-1771", removing the two level three section headers and combining them.
 * Put "adoption by the Seward family" as a fourth-level header subset of "early life". I don't really recommend this one though because you get into level five section headers, which I don't love.
 * OK. How about the way I have rearranged it? --Michael Goodyear (talk) 17:15, 25 August 2015 (UTC)


 * How was she related to the Sewards? Or was she related at all? If not, it's a weird transition from the two paragraphs/sections.
 * Family friends - clarified --Michael Goodyear (talk) 17:29, 25 August 2015 (UTC)


 * "Anna Seward describes how she…" Quote, details from the poem? Also, it looks unsourced in the article, even if it's not.
 * Added direct link to poem, and quote in footnotes to be consistent --Michael Goodyear (talk) 00:40, 27 August 2015 (UTC)


 * The dangling "she" at the beginning of the next sentence makes it sound like you're still talking about Anna.
 * Rephrased --Michael Goodyear (talk) 04:00, 27 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Naming conventions for the subject: you seem to always refer to her as "Honora Sneyd" or "Honora"--I would prefer that you do not use her full name, as just "Sneyd" is more concise, and because she's the only Sneyd in the article, saying "Honora" is just informal.
 * I have been trying to find out if there is a convention here, since in a review of a page I wrote on another Lichfield woman writer, that editor insisted I always use the full name. The other problem is that on marriage she assumed the name Edgeworth (see comment further down), so calling her just "Sneyd" probably will not do. Furthermore I did use the word "Sneyd" in some places, and in addition she actually is not the only Sneyd on the page since both her father and her sisters (one of whom was also a Mrs Edgewoth) are referred to as Sneyd. In other words - its complicated.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 04:18, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * WP:MOSBIO states that either full or given names should be used on a page where there are multiple people with the same name. Here we have people with the same surname and same given name, although context will have some bearing.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 11:32, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I also consulted numerous published biographies on related persons, including the ODNB, but found no consistency in style in relation to this point.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 11:43, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I believe we are now consistent with MOS, but it is extremely tricky, given the number of similar names, that is "use just the surname unless the reference is part of a list of family members or if use of the surname alone will be confusing" (which it frequently is).--Michael Goodyear (talk) 17:52, 27 August 2015 (UTC)


 * "her parents' affections" not "her parents affections"
 * Agreed --Michael Goodyear (talk) 02:30, 31 August 2015 (UTC)


 * "Honora's health was fragile" maybe "she was of ill health"
 * No, speaking as a physician they are quite different. Her health was fragile, not ill. That is also the word used in the source cited.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 02:32, 31 August 2015 (UTC)


 * "came under the influence of" is a bit vague--did she know him well? Read one of his books? Hear talk around the house?
 * Unsure what you mean here. He raised her - that would be sufficient influence.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 02:35, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Added "who raised her" this was unclear for me. Johanna  (formerly BenLinus1214)talk to me!see my work 16:13, 13 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Though Canon Seward's…pursue their own inclinations." This is a bit too explanatory on material not really related to the article. Maybe: "Though Canon Seward's (but not his wife's) attitudes towards the education of girls was progressive relative to the times, he did not give them a full range of educational opportunities. Amongst the subjects he taught them was theology and numeracy, and how to read, appreciate, write, and recite poetry. However, the omissions were also notable, including languages and science, although they were free to pursue their own inclinations in this regard."
 * Again, I'm not completely sure what you are getting at. The education the Seward children received at home seems to me very relevant to her later literary career. I have reread the original source (Barnard) for this section and rephrased it to be closer to the original.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 03:05, 31 August 2015 (UTC)


 * participate in the literary discussion how?
 * As the footnote relates the children were expected to meet and converse with the literary coterie as equals. Added conversation to clarify --Michael Goodyear (talk) 14:37, 31 August 2015 (UTC)


 * This is really interesting, but could you say more about the speculation that occurred about their relationship, either during their lives or after?
 * It is controversial, but I have placed links to the opposing viewpoints as to whether it was Lesbian or not --Michael Goodyear (talk) 15:17, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * In truth one could write a book about the arguments in the literature over this --Michael Goodyear (talk) 01:25, 4 September 2015 (UTC)


 * "She had a reputation for both intelligence and beauty," even though one can infer from the end of the sentence that the "she" is Sneyd, it's unclear at the beginning.
 * Already changed as part of revision of names and pronouns--Michael Goodyear (talk) 19:50, 31 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Why do you put the dates for all the people?
 * Well actually only major players. That helps to figure out how their lives overlapped with the main subject, and also what their age was at any particular date or event. Also for many of these people their dates are actually quite difficult to find, and it took a lot of work to get them, so I provided them here. Admittedly some authors might put them in an Appendix if this was a book --Michael Goodyear (talk) 19:54, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * However, see below--Michael Goodyear (talk) 16:01, 6 September 2015 (UTC)


 * This might just be a fault of the quote, but is it stated anywhere whether the arguments in the refusal were by Sneyd or Day?
 * For whatever reason, it seems better now. Johanna  (formerly BenLinus1214)talk to me!see my work 16:13, 13 September 2015 (UTC)


 * "By now Honora Sneyd had acquired a reputation for both intelligence and beauty." Repetitive of earlier passage
 * I am a bit confused by this. The words are Edgeworth's, describing Sneyd's refusal and refutation of Day. On rereading it several times I can see that "his" (arguments) is not clearly referenced to a subject, so I inserted [Day's] to remove any ambiguity. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 20:03, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Fixed repetition --Michael Goodyear (talk) 16:56, 13 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I would rename the next subsection "Marriage to Richard Edgeworth and Death, 1773-1780"
 * Had already been renamed in earlier revision of headings and sections --Michael Goodyear (talk) 20:04, 31 August 2015 (UTC)


 * "had corresponded regularly with Seward" which one?
 * Point taken. After extensive searching I could not locate the original source for that statement so I have removed it for now.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 19:12, 1 September 2015 (UTC)


 * "Within eight years of her marriage she would be dead at almost the same age as her predecessor." Remove this--it's overly dramatic.
 * It may appear dramatic, but I don't think it is overly dramatic. It describes not only the precarious state of women's health at the time (it is likely that the two pregnancies accelerated her death from consumption), and also the speed with which Edgeworth went through wives (and the speed with which he replaced them). His remarkable fecundity (22 children) proved to be a burden for his four wives. However I have moved it to after her death, where the effect is less dramatic.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 02:43, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that helps. Johanna  (formerly BenLinus1214)talk to me!see my work 16:13, 13 September 2015 (UTC)


 * The dates particularly clutter up the second paragraph of this section.
 * Since this keeps coming up, I have adopted a different device, and moved all dates of birth and death to an Appendix, a device not uncommon in published biographies, including the sources for this article --Michael Goodyear (talk) 16:01, 6 September 2015 (UTC)


 * "Despite Anna Seward's despair at the loss of her friend, she and Honora maintained regular correspondence and visits, which suddenly ceased, an event that Anna blamed Honora's father for." Wait, what? They can't maintain regular visits and suddenly cease at the same time, which is kind of what it sounds like when you read the sentence in its current format.
 * I don't actually see that it can be read that way. However for greater clarity, I split the sentence --Michael Goodyear (talk) 16:06, 6 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Referring to her as "Honora Edgeworth" makes it sound like you're talking about her daughter.
 * I believe I had already changed that as part of a general revision of naming conventions above. Sorting through these families' histories can be very difficult due to the large number of people with the same name. This was compounded by the tradition at the time with very large families that when a child died, which was frequent, the next child was given the name of the deceased child. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 16:10, 6 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Why did she want him to marry her sister?
 * A very interesting question, about which we could speculate endlessly, but that has no place here. The only evidence we have is Edgeworth's word, and only he and Honora were present at the time, so we must take him at its face value. I changed the wording slightly to emphasise that it was his statement alone that we rely on --Michael Goodyear (talk) 16:25, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Subsequently I found one source did speculate, so I added it.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 16:37, 6 September 2015 (UTC)


 * "Although legal [sic] this was considered scandalous…" Sentence fragment. Also grammatical error where the sic is placed.
 * I am a bit confused here, I don't recall seeing sic there, and it would not make sense if it was. I reworded it.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 16:43, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * No, sic wasn't there, I just added it in my version of the quotation so that it was clear what needed work.

Work
✅
 * You can incorporate the first sentence of this somewhere else in the section, but at the beginning definitely won't work.
 * Rephrased. Positioned here it refers back to the problems encountered in raising the older children in the previous section, and is the starting point for their atempts to devise new educational methods.


 * After reading this, "a staunch supporter of women's rights" doesn't really seem to come through in this. But definitely put more of the educational innovations in the lead.
 * Difficult to pin down due to lack of primar source material. Rephrased to better reflect what we actually know --Michael Goodyear (talk) 00:46, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * So I added a separate discussion of the issue, under Legacy --Michael Goodyear (talk) 15:03, 12 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Do you really need five cites and a note in that one spot?
 * Revised, redistributed --Michael Goodyear (talk) 15:01, 13 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Expand on the theoretical mechanic stuff a bit?
 * Only can a bit, given the paucity of primary sources --Michael Goodyear (talk) 15:45, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Legacy

 * "Because" not "since" in the first sentence here.
 * Actually "since" is more grammatically correct, because it focusses on the result not reason - English Grammar Today --Michael Goodyear (talk) 15:51, 13 September 2015 (UTC)


 * There's some good stuff in the Anna Seward article about some of Seward's words regarding Sneyd--maybe you could incorporate them here.
 * That's because I wrote much of that page too. --Michael Goodyear (talk) 04:20, 27 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Source for her appearance in the play?
 * I had linked to the page on the play - I will add the play itself --Michael Goodyear (talk) 16:02, 13 September 2015 (UTC)