Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Felicia Hemans
-
Standard Name: Hemans, Felicia
Birth Name: Felicia Dorothea Browne
Married Name: Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Pseudonym: F. H.
Pseudonym: A Lady
A major Romantic poet and the most popular woman poet (or poetess as she and others expressed it) in English during the nineteenth century, FH
published nineteen volumes of verse and two dramas. While most of her work was poetry—songs, lyric poetry, dramatic lyrics (arguably dramatic monologues), narrative poetry, and verse drama—she also published literary criticism, and some of her private letters survive. After her death she became in the mid-Victorian period a household name and a staple for memorizing as the popular educational practice at home and in the colonies. Her evocation of the domestic affections and the values associated with English national valour and imperial strength resonated strongly with her contemporaries, but in the late Victorian period her work fell out of favour. Recently interest has revived in her as a female voice within Romanticism, and as a vehicle for bourgeois, domestic, and British hegemony that nevertheless also critiques the very values and ideals for which her work became a byword. Recognition of her as a major poetic voice has accompanied a substantial shift in the understanding of British Romanticism.
The poem is innovative in its blend of novelistic discourse and subject-matter—its depiction of the urban landscape and contemporary social issues including wife-beating and prostitution were indebted to both the English and French novel—with the...
Intertextuality and Influence
Grace Aguilar
The central character is the undowered girl Florence Leslie—so called because of her birth in Italy—whose high-minded principles have been fuelled by indiscriminate
Aguilar, Grace. Woman’s Friendship. D. Appleton and Company.
13
reading in history, poetry, and romance at an early age...
Friends, Associates
Mary Howitt
In Nottingham MH
met L. E. L.
and perhaps Elizabeth Fry
. She was visited by Mary
and Dora Wordsworth
(wife and daughter of the poet), and later she and her husband stayed with the...
Friends, Associates
Anne Grant
Among AG
's acquaintances in her later years were Felicia Hemans
and Thomas Campbell
.
Paston, George, and George Paston. “Mrs. Grant of Laggan”. Little Memoirs of the Eighteenth Century, E. P. Dutton, pp. 237-96.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
She...
Friends, Associates
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
In London in 1824 she had a socially unsuccessful meeting with Wordsworth
, who was by now a thorough reactionary in politics. He went to some pains to snub her; she refused to notice this...
Friends, Associates
Geraldine Jewsbury
GJ
encountered a strong female literary role model early in life, when at sixteen she summered in Wales with her siblings, staying in a cottage not far from that of Felicia Hemans
and her family...
Friends, Associates
Eliza Mary Hamilton
She was introduced to William Wordsworth
through her brother
, and Wordsworth visited the Hamilton siblings at Dunsink in August 1829.
Blain, Virginia. “Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Eliza Mary Hamilton, and the Genealogy of the Victorian Poetess”. Victorian Poetry, Vol.
33
, No. 1, pp. 31-51.
38
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Although they had been corresponding by letter for some time, this holiday was the first time the two writers met in person. MJJ
was soon accepted into Hemans
' social circle and become friends with...
Friends, Associates
Grace Aguilar
Around this time her acquaintance deepened with Camilla Crosland
.
Crosland, Camilla. Landmarks of a Literary Life, 1820-1892. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Galchinsky, Michael. The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer. Wayne State University Press.
145
Friends, Associates
Mary Russell Mitford
She knew most of the literary women of her day, including Felicia Hemans
(who wrote to ask her for an autograph),
L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, editor. The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford as Recorded in Letters from Her Literary Correspondents. Hurst and Blackett.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
2: 213
Fictionalization
Lady Arbella Stuart
LAS
has been much written about, though more for her life than her authorship. In 1611 The Second Maiden's Tragedy, probably by Thomas Middleton
, made her into the Lady, James I into...
Fictionalization
Lady Anne Clifford
The Memorial Pillar, a poem by Felicia Hemans
, meditates on the monument which LAC
set up to record her final parting from her mother.
Wilson, Frances. “The Italy of Human Beings”. London Review of Books, pp. 26-7.
27
Family and Intimate relationships
Mary Anne Jevons
Mary Anne was very close to her father, William Roscoe
, the historian, writer, patron of the arts, abolitionist and reformer. William began his professional career as a barrister, but retired early. Soon afterwards he...
Family and Intimate relationships
Frances Power Cobbe
Lloyd was the daughter of the squire of Rhagatt in Merionethshire, Wales; a maiden aunt in the family had been a friend of the Ladies of Llangollen (Eleanor Butler
and Sarah Ponsonby
)...