Elizabeth Singer Rowe

11 September 1674 - 20 February 1737

ESR wrote witty, topical, satirical poetry during the 1690s, followed later in life by letters, essays, fiction (often epistolary), and a wide range of poetic modes, often though not invariably with a moral or religious emphasis. Her reputation as a moral and devotional writer during her lifetime and for some time afterwards stood extremely high. Current critical debate is establishing the element of proto-feminist or amatory fiction (what Paula Backscheider calls experimental, subversive, and transgressive) in her prose against the didactic-devotional element.

Backscheider, Paula R. Elizabeth Singer Rowe and the Development of the English Novel. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.

BirthName: Elizabeth Singer
Married: Rowe
Her married name was placed on her works by others, not by herself; she last voluntarily published by name in 1704, before her marriage. The title Mrs Singer implied respect but said nothing at this date about marital status.
Pseudonyms: Philomela
Philomela, the nightingale, amounts to a poetic version of the name Singer.
; The Pindarick Lady; The Pindarical Lady; The Author of Friendship in Death
Indexed: Mrs Singer

Milestones

11 September 1674

Elizabeth Singer (later ESR ) was born at Ilchester in Somerset.

Stecher, Henry F. Elizabeth Singer Rowe, the Poetess of Frome: A Study in Eighteenth-Century English Pietism. Herbert Lang, 1973.

21 October 1693-7 January 1696

Elizabeth Singer (later ESR ), as Philomela, published poems in John Dunton 's The Athenian Mercury (formerly The Athenian Gazette).

Greer, Germaine et al., editors. Kissing the Rod. Virago, 1988.

383

Stecher, Henry F. Elizabeth Singer Rowe, the Poetess of Frome: A Study in Eighteenth-Century English Pietism. Herbert Lang, 1973.

39, 52

16 January 1728

ESR anonymously published her Friendship in Death, in Twenty Letters from the Dead to the Living.

A Register of Books 1728-1732, extracted from the Monthly Chronicle. Gregg Press, 1964.

1 (January 1728): 23

20 February 1737

ESR died of a stroke at Frome in Somerset, in the act of devotion,

Barbauld, Anna Letitia. Anna Letitia Barbauld : Selected Poetry and Prose. Editors McCarthy, William and Elizabeth Kraft, Broadview, 2001.

97n3

in the small hours of the morning.

Greer, Germaine et al., editors. Kissing the Rod. Virago, 1988.

384

Stecher, Henry F. Elizabeth Singer Rowe, the Poetess of Frome: A Study in Eighteenth-Century English Pietism. Herbert Lang, 1973.

95, 156

By 8 March 1739

ESR 's brother-in-law Theophilus Rowe edited and published her posthumous Miscellaneous Works in Prose and Verse (for which he finished the memoir begun by Henry Grove ).

Foxon, David F. English Verse 1701-1750. Cambridge University Press, 1975, 2 vols.

Bigold, Melanie. “Elizabeth Rowe’s Fictional and Familiar Letters: Exemplarity, Enthusiasm, and the Production of Posthumous Meaning”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.

, No. 1, 2006, pp. 1-14.

2-3

Biography

Birth

11 September 1674

Elizabeth Singer (later ESR ) was born at Ilchester in Somerset.

Stecher, Henry F. Elizabeth Singer Rowe, the Poetess of Frome: A Study in Eighteenth-Century English Pietism. Herbert Lang, 1973.