Phebe Gibbes - Writing Career

Writing Career

Phebe Gibbes first entered the world of English literature with an astonishing double-debut in 1764, with the extremely controversial novel, The Life and Adventures of Mr. Francis Clive (1764) and the epistolary, History of Lady Louisa Stroud, and the Honorable Miss Caroline Stretton (1764). Three years after her debut, Gibbes published two novels, The Woman of Fashion; or, the History of Lady Diana Dormer (1767) and The History of Miss Pittsborough (1767), a novel especially lauded by the Critical Review as “chaste” and “virtuous”. Two years later, Gibbes again created an effusion of work with The History of Miss Somerville (1769); The Fruitless Repentance; or, the History of Miss Kitty Le Fever (1769), and The History of Miss Eliza Musgrove (1769). The Critical Review wrote positively of Miss Eliza Musgrove, citing Gibbes’ novel as “equal in genius to Lennox, Brookes, and Scott.” After a fruitful entrance into the scene of women’s literature, Gibbes continued to produce novels until Hartly House, Calcutta in 1789; Gibbes may potentially have created works into the 1790s, but they are unverified or also attributed to other writers.

Gibbes claims, in her 1804 application to the Royal Literary Fund, a prolific 22 titles; however, only fourteen of Gibbes’ novels (or potential novels) are actually traceable. Like many writers of her time, Gibbes wrote anonymously on almost all of her works, with the exclusion of The Niece; or the History of Sukey Thornby (1788), on which she writes ‘Mrs. P. Gibbes’.

Gibbes’ writing provides very vividly descriptive accounts of the places she visits, namely India and the American continent, often naming the precise titles of the servants and the exact prices for various items; as such, her work provides a key resource for Indologists and scholars who desire personal, from life, accounts of contemporary 18th century experiences.

Gibbes in her later life earned her living ‘by the pen,’ a job considered unfit for a woman – only writing for pleasure was condoned, not for survival (a fact embraced in Elfrida, where the protagonist is harshly admonished for working to earn a living as a musician post-marriage) – and as such, she had no means to interact with the indulgent culture of her youth. Gibbes appears to cherish the epicurean lifestyles of the contemporary upper-class, while also reviling and critiquing the gross materialism of her era. She often tends toward describing very lushly a material culture, and yet causing her protagonist to reject that culture.