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.
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.
forthcoming
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.
qtd. in
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
Anne Steele
AS
evidently chose her friends at least partly for their literary interests, since they included three publishing women of a younger generation—Hannah More
, Anna Seward
, and (a closer friend than the first...
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...
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
...
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...
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 et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
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...
death
Anna Miller
She was buried in Bath Abbey, with a poetic epitaph by Anna Seward
.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 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, 6 vols.
3: 310
Cultural formation
Mary Delany
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.
