Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Anna Seward
-
Standard Name: Seward, Anna
Birth Name: Anna Seward
Nickname: The Swan of Lichfield
Nickname: Nancy
AS
, living at a distance from London, was nevertheless a woman of letters, of the later eighteenth century and just beyond. She staked her claim to fame firstly on her poetry (though she was always willing to try genres unusual to her, like sermons and a biography of Erasmus Darwin
), secondly on her letters. In these and in her newspaper contributions she was also a literary critic, familiar with the criteria of both the Augustan and Romantic eras and gifted besides with an unfailing independence of judgement.
"Anna Seward" Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anna_Seward_by_Tilly_Kettle.jpg.This work is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license. This work is in the public domain.
In Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes, 2011, Lisa L. Moore
classified MD
, along with the Duchess of Portland
, Anna Seward
, and the American Sarah Pierce
(1767-1852), as lesbian-like women...
Cultural formation
Mary Scott
MS
grew up in a prosperous, middle-class household, in which religion was the centre of everyday life and activity. Most sources agree that her family were Protestant Dissenters.
She was buried in Bath Abbey, with a poetic epitaph by Anna Seward
.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/, http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
death
Mary Scott
Anna Seward
addressed her an anxious letter dated 10 September, obviously having not yet learned about her death.
Seward, Anna. Letters of Anna Seward. Editor Constable, Archibald, Vol.
6 vols.
, A. Constable, 1811.
3: 310
Dedications
Margaret Holford
The elder Margaret Holford
published with her name, through the Minerva Press
, First Impressions; or, The Portrait. A Novel, in four volumes, dedicated to Anna Seward
.
Garside, Peter, James Raven, and Rainer Schöwerling, editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000.
2: 135-6
Dedications
Margaret Holford
Published by Hookham and Carpenter
, this was a slim volume of 44 pages, with a title-page quotation from Pope
's Windsor Forest, and a handsome illustration of Gresford Lodge near Wrexham in Denbighshire...
Education
Mary Scott
Little is known of MS
's education, but her correspondence with Anna Seward
suggests familiarity with both classic and recent literature. Further, the knowledge she displays in The Female Advocate of women's writing in particular...
Family and Intimate relationships
Fanny Holcroft
Thomas Holcroft held progressive ideas about women and their education, as he showed in 1794 in a brief review of Miss or Mrs. C. Short
's Dramas for the Use of Young Ladies (to which...
Family and Intimate relationships
Mary Scott
MS
's father was a linen manufacturer, a Dissenter according to most accounts, and a zealous supporter of the civil and religious liberties of Protestant dissenters. Among his brothers was the Rev. Russell Scott
...
Fictionalization
Frances Burney
Bibliographer James Raven
notes a crescendo in novelistic echoes of FB
's works during the 1780s. Burney's brother Charles
, for instance, noted borrowings from both Evelina and Cecilia in his review for the Monthly...
Friends, Associates
J. S. Anna Liddiard
She wrote that Lady Eleanor Butler
and Sarah Ponsonby
, the Ladies of Llangollen, treated her with very kind and flattering attention when she visited them.
Liddiard, J. S. Anna. Kenilworth and Farley Castle: with Other Poems. Hibernia–Press Office, 1813.
prelims
She may perhaps have known Anna Seward
Friends, Associates
Jane Cave
It is possible, though this is speculative, that JC
became acquainted while living at Winchester with the hymn-writer Anne Steele
(who lived not far away), with Anna Seward
and Hannah More
(who were friends of...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Pipe Wolferstan
Samuel Pipe Wolferstan"s friends included Erasmus Darwin
, Anna Seward
, Thomas Gisborne
, and the novelist Robert Bage
. Of EPW
's own friends, Mary Gresley
was seriously pursued by her husband before he married Elizabeth.
Wolferstan, Elizabeth Pipe. “Preface”. Agatha, edited by John Goss.
Hays, Mary. “Chronology and Introduction”. The Correspondence (1779-1843) of Mary Hays, British Novelist, edited by Marilyn Brooks, Edwin Mellen, 2004, pp. xv - xx; 1.
Mavor, Elizabeth. The Ladies of Llangollen. Michael Joseph, 1971.
126
Timeline
1770
The Lichfield Circle began to develop at Lichfield in Staffordshire; the group advocated reform of women's education away from time-filling accomplishments such as japanning and toward intellectual learning.
16 December 1773
Citizens dumped 340 chests of tea into the harbour at Boston, Massachusetts, to protest duty imposed by the Tea Act of 10 May; this became known as the Boston Tea Party.
William Hayley
published his Philosophical, Historical and Moral Essay on Old Maids; most women readers agreed with Anna Seward
that the book displayed witty, but ungenerous sport of fancy.
Seward, Anna. Letters of Anna Seward. Editor Constable, Archibald, Vol.
6 vols.
, A. Constable, 1811.
I: 147
April 1789
The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward
's selection of living celebrated Female Poets.
Philip James de Loutherbourg
painted Coalbrookdale by Night, a theatrically romantic picture of a famous industrial village: houses perched on the valley cliffs, with a clouded sky glaring red from furnaces.
December 1802
The Critical Review extolled the quality of contemporary women's poetry: Miss Seward
, Mrs Barbauld
, Charlotte Smith
, will take their place among the English poets for centuries to come.
Seward, Anna. Anna Seward’s Journal and Sermons. Editor Barnard, Teresa, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017.
Seward, Anna. Blindness. J. Montgomery, 1806.
Seward, Anna. Elegy on Captain Cook. J. Dodsley, 1780.
Seward, Anna. Letters of Anna Seward. Editor Constable, Archibald, Vol.
6 vols.
, A. Constable, 1811.
Seward, Anna. Llangollen Vale, with Other Poems. G. Sael, 1796.
Seward, Anna. Louisa. J. Jackson and G. Robinson, 1784.
Seward, Anna, Alexander Pope, Peter Abelard, Héloïse, and Alexander Pope. “Memoirs of Abelard and Eloisa”. Letters of Abelard and Eloisa, translated by. John Hughes and John Hughes, J. Mitchell, 1805.
Seward, Anna. Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Darwin. J. Johnson, 1804.
Seward, Anna. Monody on Major André. Printed and sold by J. Jackson, for the author, 1781.
Seward, Anna. Original Sonnets on various Subjects and Odes paraphrased from Horace. G. Sael, 1799.
Seward, Anna, and Wally Chamberlain Oulton. The Beauties of Anna Seward. C. Chapple, 1813.
Seward, Anna. The Poetical Works of Anna Seward. Editor Scott, Sir Walter, J. Ballantyne, 1810.