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 Her letters remained unpublished.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.
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
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...
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
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...
Dedications
Anna Maria Porter
The first volume had a frontispiece designed by AMP
's brother R. K. Porter
. The epigraph came from the introduction to Gay
's Fables (1727) : From objects most minute and mean, / A...
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.
She begins with Wales (whose countryside she praises but whose peasants she fairly sweepingly dismisses).
Spence, Elizabeth Isabella. Summer Excursions. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme.
1: 24-5
Although her title-page does not name it, she returned to Wales on a later journey, and devotes a...
Leisure and Society
Mariana Starke
MS
and her family were great supporters of literature through the subscription system. She subscribed in 1781 to Anne Francis
's Poetical Translation of the Song of Solomon, from the original Hebrew, which was...
Literary responses
Phillis Wheatley
Much initial response to PW
as a poet saw her as a freak, a curiosity, or a political argument. A typical reviewer found her work merely imitative, without endemial marks of solar fire or...
