Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Ann Yearsley
-
Standard Name: Yearsley, Ann
Birth Name: Ann Cromartie
Married Name: Ann Yearsley
Pseudonym: The Milkwoman
Nickname: Lactilla, or the Bristol Milkwoman
AY
became famous at the outset of her career as a primitive or untaught poet: a role she herself rejected in the course of a bitter row with her patron Hannah More
. She went on to publish without the help of patrons, and to add a play and a novel to her poetry. Her letters remained unpublished. Though actually far from uneducated (she packs her poems with literary allusions), she is a writer who lays less emphasis on formal structures or conventions than on sturdy individualism and on the Romantic outpouring of emotion.
Independent-minded as she was, EF
faced restrictions on her activities as an unmarried girl. She had been taken on a tour of the Scottish Highlands in 1786, but now when she badly wanted to travel...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Eliza Fletcher
The correspondence concerned books read, benevolent schemes undertaken (some having to do with inoculation or with Sunday schools), and particularly efforts to secure a career and literary income for the poet Ann Yearsley
.
Waldron, Mary. “A Different Kind of Patronage: Ann Yearsley’s Later Friends”. The Age of Johnson, edited by Paul J. Korshin and Jack Lynch, Vol.
13
, AMS Press, pp. 283-35.
290, 294, 295ff
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Judith Sargent Murray
Constantia's Preface to the Reader of the collected volumes, dated 16 March 1797 and signed with her female pseudonym,
Murray, Judith Sargent. The Gleaner. I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews.
1: ix
says she is a lover of humanity, and that her ruling passion [is]...
Textual Production
Hannah More
HM
wrote her first surviving letter about Ann Yearsley
to Elizabeth Montagu
, recounting in high terms the former's intense gratitude to the latter.
Waldron, Mary. Lactilla, Milkwoman of Clifton: The Life and Writings of Ann Yearsley, 1753-1806. University of Georgia Press.
49
Textual Production
Hannah More
HM
composed a Prefatory Letter to Montagu
, telling her about Yearsley
, designed for printing at the head of Yearsley's poems to be published by subscription.
Waldron, Mary. Lactilla, Milkwoman of Clifton: The Life and Writings of Ann Yearsley, 1753-1806. University of Georgia Press.
60
Textual Production
Hannah More
HM
wrote to tell Montagu
of Yearsley
's blackest ingratitude.
Waldron, Mary. Lactilla, Milkwoman of Clifton: The Life and Writings of Ann Yearsley, 1753-1806. University of Georgia Press.
65
Textual Production
Jane Cave
Twenty people were killed in this episode, which happened on 30 September. The pamphlets containing JC
's poem survive in Bristol Central Reference Library
.
Schürer, Norbert. “Jane Cave Winscom: Provincial Poetry and the Metropolitan Connection”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
36
, No. 3, pp. 415-31.
421n37
It was duly added to her next collection. Ann Yearsley
Textual Production
Charlotte Nooth
His De la littérature des Nègres in its original form reflects internationalism, anglophilia, and perhaps even proto-feminism. The title-page quotes Mary Robinson
. The roll of honour of white activists for abolition and racial equality...
Textual Production
Eliza Fletcher
Eliza Dawson (later EF
) sent to Ann Yearsley
a poetic epistle whose topics included despair (apparently ascribing that emotion to Yearsley).
Waldron, Mary. “A Different Kind of Patronage: Ann Yearsley’s Later Friends”. The Age of Johnson, edited by Paul J. Korshin and Jack Lynch, Vol.
13
, AMS Press, pp. 283-35.
307
Textual Features
Mary Maria Colling
As its extended title suggests, the book is prefaced by three letters from Bray to Southey. The correspondence provided the Poet Laureate with MMC
's life history, as well as examples of her poems. The...
Textual Features
Mary Robinson
To demonstrate, as well as arguing for, mental equality, MR
learnedly surveys the course of political and literary history. She honours many women writers of the past (Aphra Behn
and Susanna Centlivre
as well...
Textual Features
Anna Seward
The series (completed in 1791) developed from AS
's strictures on John Weston
's contributions to a book entitled Records of the Woodmen of Arden. She compared Dryden
with Pope
to the advantage of...
Textual Features
Robert Southey
Among the uneducated poets RS
included Ann Yearsley
, becoming her first critic since the original reviewers.
EF
's patronage of writers was bound up with her political views as an abolitionist: in March 1788 she was actively circulating for sale Ann Yearsley
's A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave...
Occupation
Hannah More
HM
embarked on helping Ann Yearsley
in the terrible winter of 1783-4, when the Yearsley family were near destitution. Charity modulated into literary patronage over the year 1784, as More brought Yearsley to the attention...
Timeline
1764: German labouring-class poet Anna Luise Karsch...
Writing climate item
1764
German labouring-class poet Anna Luise Karsch
first reached print with four separate publications at Berlin, most importantly a collection, Auserlesene Gedichte (edited for publication by J. G. Sulzer
).
April 1789: The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward's...
Women writers item
April 1789
The Gentleman's Magazine published Anna Seward
's selection of living celebrated Female Poets.
30 September 1793: Troops opened fire on citizens of Bristol...
National or international item
30 September 1793
Troops opened fire on citizens of Bristol who were demonstrating against the imposition of tolls on a bridge.
By June 1806: Poems Written on Different Occasions by the...
Women writers item
By June 1806
Poems Written on Different Occasions by the domestic servant Charlotte Richardson
were selected, edited, and published with some account of the author by the middle-class activist and social reformer Catharine Cappe
.
Texts
Yearsley, Ann. A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave Trade. G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1788.
Yearsley, Ann. An Elegy on Marie Antoinette. Printed for the author, 1794, http://3 copies known: 2 BL, Houghton.
Yearsley, Ann. Earl Goodwin. G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1791.
Yearsley, Ann. Poems, on Several Occasions. T. Cadell, 1785.
Yearsley, Ann. Poems, on Several Occasions. G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1786.
Yearsley, Ann. Poems, on Various Subjects. G. G. J. and J. Robinson.
Yearsley, Ann. Reflections on the Death of Louis XVI. Printed for the author, 1793.
Yearsley, Ann. Sequel to the Reflections on the Death of Louis XVI. Printed for the author, 1793.
Yearsley, Ann. Stanzas of Woe. G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1790, http://Few known copies:BL, Cambridge UL, Houghton, Huntington.
Yearsley, Ann. The Dispute. Printed for the author, 1791.
Yearsley, Ann. The Royal Captives. G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1795.
Yearsley, Ann. The Rural Lyre. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1796.
