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.
She advises about relations with servants, about prompt payment of bills, and other aspects of running a complicated household. She says there will always be vacant Hours to fill up with reading,
Sarah, Lady Pennington,. An Unfortunate Mother’s Advice to her Absent Daughters. W. Bristow and C. Ethrington.
38
and offers...
Textual Features
Susanna Haswell Rowson
The heroine, Meriel Howard (educated in a French convent, aged sixteen at the outset, correspondent of her school-friend Celia Shelburne) is not wholly free from error, yet provides a good model for a daughter, wife...
Textual Features
Sarah, Lady Pennington
Yet another thread relates an inset story, The Adventures of Alphonso, after the destruction of Lisbon, related by himself, in a letter to his Brother, 1756; this fiction purports to be the first-fruits of...
Textual Features
Susanna Haswell Rowson
Contents include lives of Elizabeth Singer Rowe
and of Mary Wollstonecraft
(the latter reprinted from the Monthly Visitor of London). Among the poems (some of them specifically attributed to SHR
) are one entitled...
Textual Features
Clara Reeve
CR
demonstrates the widest possible reading: from Homer
, Virgil
and Horace
(all revered) and Juvenal
and Persius
(used to prove that not all classical authors are admirable) through the heroic romances like those of...
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
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...
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...
