Elizabeth Hands

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Standard Name: Hands, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Herbert
Married Name: Elizabeth Hands
Pseudonym: Daphne
EH , a mid-eighteenth-century labouring-class poet, is of interest for the literary quality of her work (in pastoral, narrative poetry/biblical paraphrase, and satire) and also as an example of writing and publishing without the usual support of education and social standing.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Intertextuality and Influence Wendy Cope
Its very title establishes that for her a topic that matters
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
is the place of poetry in present-day culture, and that her approach to this topic is satirical in the manner of Pope , making...
Literary responses Christian Milne
CM knew from harsh experience that for a labouring-class woman, publishing poems invited personal criticism (as Elizabeth Hands in England had understood). She says she met with encouragement from patrons but that her neighbours assumed...
Literary responses Mary Sewell
Sarah Stickney Ellis remarked (rather censoriously and in a remarkable echo of fictional employers imagined by Samuel Johnson and by the servant-poet Elizabeth Hands ): I don't know that I should have liked it, if...
Textual Features Mary Barber
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 Jane Cave
A particularly lively poem is Written by Desire of a Lady, on an angry, petulant Kitchen-Maid, which follows the ancient tradition of railing in verse. Setting out to convince the kitchen-maid that she has...
Textual Features Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne
In the traditional version of The Laird o' Cockpen (he's proud and he's great), the laird opts for marriage with a girl of lower rank: this song reinforced the comforting idea that true...
Textual Features Jane West
JW uses heroic couplets for formal poems like To the Island of Sicily (on the retreat of the king and queen of the Two Sicilies before the French Army of Italy, commanded by Napoleon ...

Timeline

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 ).