Theosophical Transactions, the journal of Jane Lead
's Philadelphian Society
, warmly praised MA
's work and published extracts from it. Damaris Masham
, however (who was herself guessed by some to be the author), wrote against MA
and her associate John Norris
in 1696 and 1705: she apparently felt that the idea of institutions where unmarried women could live together savoured irremediably of Catholic convents.
Masham, though emphatically not Astell, would approve the English Short Title Catalogue's allotting this work the subject-heading Monasticism and religious orders for women.
Several of her poems appeared in periodicals (including the Gentleman's Magazine) and miscellanies in the years before her collected volume, but none of them with her name. Stella and Flavia appeared in three miscellanies and a newspaper, but its attribution to MB
is doubtful.
Budd, Adam. “’Merit in Distress’: The Troubled Success of Mary Barber”. Review of English Studies, pp. 204 - 27.
During her early years in London with her husband, Thomas Brereton
, JB
not only wrote but printed poems. Some appeared in the Whitehall Evening-Post: for example To the Author of the Progress of Poetry [Judith Cowper Madan
] and The Dream (which repeats her praise of Madan).
Brereton, Jane. Poems on Several Occasions. Edward Cave, 1744.
Delights for the Ingenious; or, A Monthly Entertainment for the Curious of Both Sexes, a periodical collected in a volume by John Tipper
, published two poems ascribed to MF
by name.
Tipper, John, editor. Delights for the Ingenious. Printed by J. Roberts.
A love-song by Frances, Countess of Hertford
, which she called Song to a River, was published in Bickham's Musical Entertainer, as The Maid's Request.
Hughes, Helen Sard. The Gentle Hertford, Her Life and Letters. Macmillan, 1940.
Both Mary Pendarves (later Mary Delany)
and John Wesley
had read this remarkable work in manuscript the previous year. (Wesley had been reading her writing with enjoyment since at least April 1733.)
Glover, Susan Paterson, and Sarah Chapone. “Introduction”. The Hardships of the English Laws, Routledge, 2018, pp. 1 - 16.
11
Both Pendarves
and Wesley's sister Mehetabel Wright
had suffered in bitterly unhappy marriages which were not of their own choosing. SC
's authorship has only recently been substantiated: she is identified in a note in the British Library
copy, and in a letter from one Anna Hopkins
of Evesham to Ballard
, written in 1741.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
The Gentleman's Magazine reprinted extensive excerpts this same year, and more than fifty years later, in January 1788, the Columbian Magazine published in Philadelphia began a 5-part reprint of the text under the title of A Tract on the Unreasonableness of the Law in regard to Wives, with its usage of the pronoun we for women altered to they.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Glover, Susan Paterson, and Sarah Chapone. “Introduction”. The Hardships of the English Laws, Routledge, 2018, pp. 1 - 16.
1
A scholarly edition by Susan Glover
appeared in 2018.
Sir Thomas Littleton or Lyttelton
, who died in 1581, was the author of the first book of law to be published in England. A massive commentary on this work, made by Sir Edward Coke
in 1628 and known as Coke on Littleton, became a standard legal textbook, last reprinted at Washington, DC, in 1903.
Madan, Falconer. The Madan Family. Oxford University Press, 1933.
The Gentleman's Magazine reprinted (two or three years after CG
's death) her To Mrs. Mary Barber, which had just appeared in Barber's Poems on Several Occasions.
MJ
's elegy Epistle to the Right Honourable Lady Aubrey Beauclerk, in memory of her Lord (who was slain on board the Prince Frederick Man of War at Carthagena, March 1741), was reprinted in the Gentleman's Magazine.
Of the occasional poems which did appear in print during this period, one was a satire published as being by Benjamin Victor
, whose poetry The Concise Dictionary of National Biography terms wretched verse.
The Concise Dictionary of National Biography: From Earliest Times to 1985. Oxford University Press, 1995.
Of publishing in bits and pieces LP
wrote, But, alas! though my Honours were very great, my Profits were very small.
Pilkington, Laetitia. Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington. Elias, A. C.Editor , University of Georgia Press, 1997.
1: 160
After Cibber helped her out of difficulty, she wrote him a poem of thanks which, according to her, was published in the official newspaper, the Gazette, on New Year's Day. It undoubtedly appeared a few months later in The Daily Gazetteer, 25 May 1743.
Pilkington, Laetitia. Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington. Elias, A. C.Editor , University of Georgia Press, 1997.