Elizabeth Moody

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EM was a talented and independent-minded poet of the later eighteenth century, who also worked professionally as a reviewer into the early years of the nineteenth. She was said to be a remarkable letter-writer. She began writing before the Romantic movement got under way, and though she published during the period of its sway her sensibility is social, ironical, and wholly non-romantic.

Milestones

1737

 At about thie date Elizabeth Greenly (later EM ) was born into a family of several children at Kingston in Surrey (close to London) which was rich in wit and art.
Waters, Mary A. British Women Writers and the Profession of Literary Criticism, 1789-1832. Palgrave Macmillan.
141

1770

EM includes in her volume of poems some which date from this year.
Moody, Elizabeth. Poetic Trifles. Cadell and Davies.
22ff

December 1789-August 1808

EM wrote at least twenty-nine notices of books for the Monthly Review: a pioneering activity for a woman.
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
84 (1814): 2: 613
Waters, Mary A. British Women Writers and the Profession of Literary Criticism, 1789-1832. Palgrave Macmillan.
141
Johns-Putra, Adeline. “British Women Writers of the Romantic Period: An Anthology of Their Literary Criticism”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
35
, No. 2, pp. 262-3.
263

October 1798

EM dated her collection, Poetic Trifles, written at Surbiton Farm and published that year.
Moody, Elizabeth. Poetic Trifles. Cadell and Davies.
prelims

10 December 1814

EM died at Turnham Green, near London.
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
84 (1814): 2: 613

Biography

Birth and Family

1737

 At about thie date Elizabeth Greenly (later EM ) was born into a family of several children at Kingston in Surrey (close to London) which was rich in wit and art.
Waters, Mary A. British Women Writers and the Profession of Literary Criticism, 1789-1832. Palgrave Macmillan.
141