Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry

Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry
Author: Paula R. Backscheider
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 556
Release: 2005-12-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780801881695

Co-Winner, James Russell Lowell Prize, Modern Language Association This major study offers a broad view of the writing and careers of eighteenth-century women poets, casting new light on the ways in which poetry was read and enjoyed, on changing poetic tastes in British culture, and on the development of many major poetic genres and traditions. Rather than presenting a chronological survey, Paula R. Backscheider explores the forms in which women wrote and the uses to which they put those forms. Considering more than forty women in relation to canonical male writers of the same era, she concludes that women wrote in all of the genres that men did but often adapted, revised, and even created new poetic kinds from traditional forms. Backscheider demonstrates that knowledge of these women's poetry is necessary for an accurate and nuanced literary history. Within chapters on important canonical and popular verse forms, she gives particular attention to such topics as women's use of religious poetry to express candid ideas about patriarchy and rape; the continuing evolution and important role of the supposedly antiquarian genre of the friendship poetry; same-sex desire in elegy by women as well as by men; and the status of Charlotte Smith as a key figure of the long eighteenth century, not only as a Romantic-era poet.

Eighteenth Century Women Poets

Eighteenth Century Women Poets
Author: Roger Lonsdale
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 612
Release: 1990
Genre: English literature
ISBN: 9780192827753

More than 100 women poets of the 18th century are represented in this anthology. Written by duchesses, ladies and working women, the poems speak with vigour and immediacy of the world they lived in and their experiences of town and country.

Eighteenth-Century Women Poets

Eighteenth-Century Women Poets
Author: Moira Ferguson
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 180
Release: 1995-11-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780791425121

This book shows how eighteenth-century women's literature redefined nation and culture in class and gendered terms.

British Women Poets of the Long Eighteenth Century

British Women Poets of the Long Eighteenth Century
Author: Paula R. Backscheider
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009-10-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780801892783

This anthology gathers 368 poems by 80 British women poets of the long eighteenth century. Few of these poems have been reprinted since originally published, and all are crucial to understanding fully the literary history of women writers. Paula R. Backscheider and Catherine E. Ingrassia demonstrate the enormous diversity of poetry produced during this time by organizing the poems in three broad and deliberately overlapping categories: by genre, establishing that women wrote in all of the forms that men did with equal mastery and creativity; by theme, offering a revisionary look at the range of topics these writers addressed, including war, ecology, friendship, religion, and the stages of life; and by the poems’ more specific focus on the women’s experiences as writers. Backscheider and Ingrassia have selected poems that represent the best work of skilled poets, creating a wonderful mix of canonical and little-known pieces. They include the complete texts of longer poems that are abridged or omitted in other collections. Their substantial part introductions, textual notes, bibliographical information, and biographical sketches situate the poets and their writings within the cultural and political milieu in which they appeared. To generate further scholarship on this subject, this essential anthology puts primary texts in front of students, scholars, and general readers. It fills the persistent need to document women’s poetic expression during the long eighteenth century and to rewrite the literary history of the period, a history from which women have largely been excluded.

Poetic Sisters

Poetic Sisters
Author: Deborah Kennedy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2013
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1611484855

In Poetic Sisters, Deborah Kennedy explores the personal and literary connections among five early eighteenth-century women poets: Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea; Elizabeth Singer Rowe; Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford; Sarah Dixon; and Mary Jones. Richly illustrated and elegantly written, this book brings the eighteenth century to life, presenting a diverse range of material from serious religious poems to amusing verses on domestic life. The work of Anne Finch, author of "A Nocturnal Reverie," provides the cornerstone for this well informed study. But it was Elizabeth Rowe who achieved international fame for her popular religious writings. Both women influenced the Countess of Hertford, who wrote about the beauty of nature, centuries before modern Earth Day celebrations. Sarah Dixon, a middle-class writer from Kent, had a strong moral outlook and stood up for those whose voices needed to be heard, including her own. Finally, Mary Jones, who lived in Oxford, was praised for both her genius and her sense of humor. Poetic Sisters presents a fascinating female literary network, revealing the bonds of a shared vocation that unites these writers. It also traces their literary afterlife from the eighteenth century to the present day, with references to contemporary culture, demonstrating how their work resonates with new generations of readers.

"Lactilla Tends Her Fav'rite Cow"

Author: Anne Milne
Publisher: Associated University Presse
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2008
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780838756928

Lactilla Tends her Fav'rite Cow benefits from the foundations set by earlier studies of laboring-class writers even as it extends their conclusions through the use of an explicitly ecocritical perspective."--BOOK JACKET.

English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century, 1700-1789

English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century, 1700-1789
Author: David Fairer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2014-10-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317892887

In recent years the canon of eighteenth-century poetry has greatly expanded to include women poets, labouring-class and provincial poets, and many previously unheard voices. Fairer’s book takes up the challenge this ought to pose to our traditional understanding of the subject. This book seeks to question some of the structures, categories, and labels that have given the age its reassuring shape in literary history. In doing so Fairer offers a fresh and detailed look at a wide range of material.

Women Latin Poets

Women Latin Poets
Author: Jane Stevenson
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 675
Release: 2005
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0198185022

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The Matrimonial Trap

The Matrimonial Trap
Author: Laura E. Thomason
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2013-12-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1611485274

Mary Delany’s phrase “the matrimonial trap” illuminates the apprehension with which genteel women of the eighteenth century viewed marriage. These women were generally required to marry in order to secure their futures, yet hindered from freely choosing a husband. They faced marriage anxiously because they lacked the power either to avoid it or to define it for themselves. For some women, the written word became a means by which to exercise the power that they otherwise lacked. Through their writing, they made the inevitable acceptable while registering their dissatisfaction with their circumstances. Rhetoric, exercised both in public and in private, allowed these women to define their identities as individuals and as wives, to lay out and test the boundaries of more egalitarian spousal relationships, and to criticize the traditional marriage system as their culture had defined it.

Mary Leapor

Mary Leapor
Author: Richard Greene
Publisher:
Total Pages: 243
Release: 1993
Genre: Poets, English
ISBN: 9780191671234

Mary Leapor (1722-1746), a Northamptonshire kitchen maid produced a substantial body of exceptional poetry which was only published after her death at the age of 24. This book examines Leapor's poetry.