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.
To a Lady, who commanded me to send her an Account in Verse, how I succeeded in my Subscription anticipates Elizabeth Hands
in satirical sketches of potential readers who scorn her efforts because of their...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Smith
Smith's preface, which discusses theology and Klopstock's admiration for Elizabeth Singer Rowe
, clearly indicates a hope of publishing. The body of the book consists chiefly the Klopstock letters, including those addressed by him to...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
EOB
writes in terms of a women's tradition: for instance, she praises Barbauld
for praising Elizabeth Rowe
. She makes confident judgements and attributions (she is sure that Lady Pakington
is the real author of...
Textual Features
Alethea Lewis
AL
dedicated this work to Lady B., possibly the mother of the addressee. Her preface To the Gentlemen Reviewers of British Literature goes over the reception of The Microcosm, and mentions her Vicissitudes...
Textual Features
Janet Little
She consistently takes a challenging stance in face of authority. Ironically (in view of Johnson's championing of women writers and Burns's snobbish attitude about herself) she uses Samuel Johnson
as a symbol of the tyrant-critic...
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 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
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...
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...
