Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
-
Standard Name: Hertford, Frances Seymour,,, Countess of
Birth Name: Frances Thynne
Married Name: Frances Seymour
Titled: Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
Titled: Frances Seymour, Duchess of Somerset
Nickname: Fanny
Pseudonym: Eusebia
Nickname: Renée
Used Form: Renee
Living an upper-class life in the eighteenth century, Lady Hertford
did not publish; her patronage activity was as important as her writing. But as well as letters, a fragmentary political journal, and commonplace-books, she wrote poems, some of which, circulating in manuscript, drifted into print in her lifetime, while a few achieved some notoriety. She claimed that she wrote for her own pleasure and found it easy to suppress any stirrings of ambition.
Kennedy, Deborah. Poetic Sisters. Early Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. Bucknell University Press.
From this point on CT
spent part of her time at Canterbury. She often stayed at Percy Lodge (near Iver in Buckinghamshire) with the Duchess of Somerset (formerly Lady Hertford)
, and in 1760...
Travel
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
She occasionally visited Lady Hertford
at Marlborough in Wiltshire.
She also adapted works by Henry Fielding
and George Lillo
, and a version of the Inkle and Yarico story originated by Richard Steele
and versified by Frances, Lady Hertford
.
National Union Catalog. Roman and Littlefield.
Textual Production
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
ESR
corresponded with Frances Seymour, Lady Hertford
, who was herself a poet and letter-writer.
Stecher, Henry F. Elizabeth Singer Rowe, the Poetess of Frome: A Study in Eighteenth-Century English Pietism. Herbert Lang.
62
Textual Production
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
ESR
's friend Lady Hertford
and her admirer Isaac Watts
published, by her desire, the first of her posthumous works: Devout Exercises of the Heart.
Stecher, Henry F. Elizabeth Singer Rowe, the Poetess of Frome: A Study in Eighteenth-Century English Pietism. Herbert Lang.
93
Textual Production
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
This volume (seen through the press by Theophilus Rowe
) prints in edited and sometimes re-arranged form many of ESR
's actual letters to Lady Hertford
, many of which incorporate poems and some of...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
The second edition, published the following year, added two more books.
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.
Bigold, Melanie. Emails to Isobel Grundy about Trotter, Carter, and Rowe.
ESR
had written most of this poem years earlier. The last two books were written in no more than two days. The whole was...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Carter
The work she translated was Algarotti
's Italian version of Newton
's Optics. The project of translating back from the Italian popularisation of this famous work was recommended to her by Thomas Birch
....
Textual Features
Anne Finch
Many of the poems in this volume are political (Jacobite) or religious in feeling. To the Right Honourable Frances Countess of Hartford is a playful warning to a very young patron to not degrade support...
Textual Features
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
All the mock eclogues (written, like most of Montagu's more ambitious poetry, in heroic couplets with the occasional triplet) target actual individuals and refer to events which were gossip of the day. Monday, Wednesday...
Reception
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
The same month Benjamin Colman
's tribute was published on the front page of the Boston Weekly News-Letter.
Stecher, Henry F. Elizabeth Singer Rowe, the Poetess of Frome: A Study in Eighteenth-Century English Pietism. Herbert Lang.
77
In March, the Gentleman's Magazine had already printed a notice of Rowe's death and a...
Publishing
Sarah Scott
It was published anonymously. The French original was current in England at this time, since the Duchess of Somerset
(patron and poet, formerly Lady Hertford) read and enjoyed it in the year before Scott's translation...
Publishing
Mary Jones
This volume was dedicated to the Princess of Orange
: Anne, daughter of George II
and the late Queen Caroline
. The princess's mother had been a patron of MJ
's friend Martha Lovelace, later...
Timeline
12 June 1724: Frances Seymour, Lady Hertford reported that...
Building item
12 June 1724
Frances Seymour, Lady Hertford
reported that the English Court had almost universally taken to wearing French fashions.
March 1748: The Poems of Thomas Warton the elder were...
12 February 1765: Thomas Percy published his edited Reliques...
Writing climate item
12 February 1765
Thomas Percy
published his edited Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, a rediscovery of poems from the middle ages. He dedicated it to the Duchess of Northumberland
, daughter of the poet and letter-writer Lady Hertford
.
September 1770: It was rumoured that the Duke and Duchess...
The duchess was a letter-writer of note; her mother, as Lady Hertford
, had...
2 September 1788: The theatre at Richmond, Yorkshire, opened...
Building item
2 September 1788
The theatre at Richmond, Yorkshire, opened with George Colman
's Inkle and Yarico.
Texts
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford, and Henrietta Louisa Fermor, Countess of Pomfret. Correspondence between Frances, Countess of Hartford and Henrietta Louisa, Countess of Pomfret. Richard Phillips, 1805.
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford,. “Inkle and Yarico: An Epistle from Yarico to Inkle”. A New Miscellany: Being a Collection of Pieces of Poetry, T. Warner, 1725.
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford,. The Story of Inkle and Yarrico. J. Cooper, 1738.