Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
-
Standard Name: Rowe, Elizabeth Singer
Birth Name: Elizabeth Singer
Married Name: Elizabeth Rowe
Pseudonym: Philomela
Pseudonym: The Pindarick Lady
Pseudonym: The Pindarical Lady
Pseudonym: The Author of Friendship in Death
ESR
wrote witty, topical, satirical poetry during the 1690s, followed later in life by letters, essays, fiction (often epistolary), and a wide range of poetic modes, often though not invariably with a moral or religious emphasis. Her reputation as a moral and devotional writer during her lifetime and for some time afterwards stood extremely high. Current critical debate is establishing the element of proto-feminist or amatory fiction (what Paula Backscheider
calls experimental, subversive, and transgressive) in her prose against the didactic-devotional element.
Backscheider, Paula R. Elizabeth Singer Rowe and the Development of the English Novel. Johns Hopkins University Press.
JB
's true attitude to her own poetic vocation is hard to fathom. In An Expostulatory Epistle to Sir Richard Steele
upon the Death of Mr. Addison she calls herself the meanest of the tuneful...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Mary Seymour Montague
The third epistle performs the conventional act of praising historical women: the monarchs Elizabeth I
and Catherine the Great
of Russia for their exercise of power, the French scholar Anne Dacier
, and eleven British...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Judith Sargent Murray
She backs this pleasure in modernity with a remarkable grasp of former female history and of the women's literary tradition in English and its contexts. She mentions the Greek foremother Sappho
, the patriotic heroism...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
Her favourite topics—religious devotion, social interaction, and landscape description—are frequently linked. She hopes that contemplating the beauties of nature will lead her thoughts to their Creator, or draws moral lessons from particular natural effects, like...
A few of the letters discuss female friendship and feminist opinion, as if seeking to raise the consciousness of the recipient. Some in this category occur at random among other letters. Most treat topics of...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Jane Brereton
The book opens, like other posthumous collections, with a biographical memoir, in this case by JB
's daughter Charlotte, who reinforces the poet's own positioning of herself as Welsh, female, and modest. Envisaging potential hostility...
Textual Production
Susanna Watts
SW
worked hard for three months at translating Tasso
's Jerusalem and Verri
's Roman Nights; she had already done some translation from Tasso in about 1786.
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
, too, had translated from Tasso's Jerusalem.
Watts, Susanna. Scrapbook.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Aucott, Shirley. Susanna Watts (1768 to 1842): author of Leicester’s first guide, abolitionist and bluestocking. Shirley Aucott.
12
Textual Production
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
Frances Thynne, later Hertford, began letter-writing at an early age. She was eleven when her grandfather
was glad to find her in an hopeful way of being a good scribe,
Hughes, Helen Sard. The Gentle Hertford, Her Life and Letters. Macmillan.
7
and twelve when her...
Textual Production
Penelope Aubin
PA
's latest novel, The Life of Charlotta Du Pont. An English Lady; Taken from her own Memoirs, was advertised with her name; it was dedicated to a Mrs Rowe.
The novel is available...
Textual Production
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
It was in this year that Lord Winchilsea
told Lady Hertford how pleased his late wife (the poet Anne Finch
) would have been with her achievement. At about the same period Elizabeth Singer Rowe
Textual Production
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
Frances Hertford and Elizabeth Singer Rowe
had each urged the other to publish her work. After Rowe's death Hertford joined with Isaac Watts
in posthumous editing of Rowe for print.
Textual Production
Jane Brereton
Bibliographer David Foxon
assigns this poem to Elizabeth Singer Rowe
, whose name was written on to the title-page by a contemporary reader of a copy now at the University of Illinois
, Urbana...
Textual Production
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
Frances, Countess of Hertford
, composed an elegy on her literary mentor: Verses to the Memory of Mrs. Rowe
by a Friend.
Hughes, Helen Sard. The Gentle Hertford, Her Life and Letters. Macmillan.
354 and n10
Textual Features
Susanna Watts
Ephemera of all kinds have been bound in: family anecdotes, a letter of William Cowper
of 1788, a Hindu Primer (or alphabet), a railway ticket of 1839, women's parliamentary petitions against slavery of 1833 (one...
Timeline
22 November 1599: Edward Fairfax licensed with the Stationers'...
Writing climate item
22 November 1599
Edward Fairfax
licensed with the Stationers' Company
his Godfrey of Bulloigne, or The Recouerie of Jerusalem, his translation of Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso
(1581), which was published in 1600.
25 June 1652: Eliza's Babes, or The Virgins-Offering, a...
Women writers item
25 June 1652
Eliza's Babes, or The Virgins-Offering, a book of poetry, was published now (according to George Thomason
): the work of an anonymous Lady, who onely desires to advance the glory of God, and not her own.
1670: Les Pensées de M. Pascal sur la réligion,...
Writing climate item
1670
Les Pensées de M. Pascal
sur la réligion, et sur quelques autres sujets was posthumously published: it takes the form of a collection of aphorisms and very brief essays.
By May 1754: John Duncombe published The Feminiad. A Poem,...
Building item
By May 1754
John Duncombe
published The Feminiad. A Poem, which celebrates the achievements of women writers with strict attention to their support for conventional morality.
January 1781-December 1782: The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties...
Writing climate item
January 1781-December 1782
The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties of British Poetry appeared, published by James Harrison
in four half-yearly numbers; it is arguable whether or not it kept the first number's promise of generous selections of work...
After 1 February 1785: M. Peddle (a gifted, little-known, Evangelical...
Women writers item
After 1 February 1785
M. Peddle
(a gifted, little-known, Evangelical woman of Yeovil in Somerset, who later issued a conduct book under the name of Cornelia) published a biblical paraphrase in novelistic style: The Life of Jacob.
June 1793: An enterprising printer and freemason, John...
Writing climate item
June 1793
An enterprising printer and freemason, John Wharlton Bunney
, put out the first number of The Free-Mason's Magazine, or General and Complete Library.
Texts
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. Devout Exercises of the Heart. R. Hett, 1738.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. Friendship in Death. T. Worrall, 1728.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer, and Josephine Grieder. Friendship in Death. Garland Publishing, 1972.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. Letters Moral and Entertaining. T. Worrall, 1732.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. Philomela: or, Poems by Mrs. Elizabeth Singer (now Rowe). E. Curll, 1736.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. Poems on Several Occasions. John Dunton, 1696.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer, and Torquato Tasso. Select Translations from Tasso’s Jerusalem. E. Curll, 1738.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. The History of Joseph. A Poem. T. Worrall, 1736.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. The Miscellaneous Works in Prose and Verse of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe. Editor Rowe, Theophilus, R. Hett and R. Dodsley, 1739.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. The Poetry of Elizabeth Singer Rowe (1674-1737). Editor Marshall, Madeleine Forell, Edwin Mellen Press, 1987.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer, and Thomas Rowe. The Works of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe. J. and A. Arch, 1796.
