The title-page quotes a stanza from Frances Greville
's Ode to Indifference. The book again purports to be by Prudentia Homespun, whose status as fictional character (and busybody and purveyor of gossip). She...
Literary responses
Ann Yearsley
Again one of Yearsley's most perceptive readers was Anna Seward
, who wrote to Helen Maria Williams
on Christmas Day 1787 that Yearsley and Burns
were both miracles . . . . Perhaps she has...