Anne Finch

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Standard Name: Finch, Anne
Birth Name: Anne Kingsmill
Married Name: Anne Finch
Titled: Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea
Pseudonym: Ardelia
Pseudonym: Areta
Pseudonym: a Lady
Used Form: Anne Finch, Lady Winchilsea
AF is an important poet of the Restoration and early eighteenth century—highly versatile and original. She wrote in many genres: fables (a high proportion of her poems, giving scope to her humour and complexity), closet drama, elegies, political, religious, personal, and proto-feminist pieces, and a notable pindaric ode which was her single most famous publication. She sometimes wrote satire, though she was sensitive to its potential for harm. She both printed a selection of her poems and carefully preserved her oeuvre in handsome manuscript form.
Low resolution scan of a miniature portrait of Anne Finch by Peter Cross, painted during the 1690s. She wears a blue dress with fairly low, lace-edged neckline. Her hair is in curls above her forehead while some locks drape her shoulder on the right.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Susanna Wright
Another of her longer poems, The Grove, is a politically complex, proto-environmentalist statement about the destruction of forest. This fits into a mini-tradition of women's poetry about the cutting down of trees, a topic...
Intertextuality and Influence Anne Wharton
Elizabeth Elstob cited AW 's poetic achievement along with that of the far better-known Katherine Philips and Anne Finch .
Elstob, Elizabeth. The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue. J. Bowyer and C. King.
xxiv
Textual Features Elizabeth Tollet
The volume opens with translations from classical authors, and includes two psalms translated into Latin.
Londry, Michael, and Elizabeth Tollet. The Poems of Elizabeth Tollet. Oxford University.
51
ET also translated from the sixteenth-century Latin of George Buchanan . One poem, Ariette, was listed as set...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Tighe
MT mentions her anguish
Tighe, Mary. Keats and Mary Tighe. Editor Weller, Earle Vonard, Kraus Reprint Corporation.
308
and says that if she could resign herself to parting with her friends, then the bitterness of death were past
Tighe, Mary. Keats and Mary Tighe. Editor Weller, Earle Vonard, Kraus Reprint Corporation.
308
—citing the words of Lady Rachel Russell 's husband...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Thomas
ET was personally acquainted with many cultivated women, for instance Sarah Hoadly (a painter who had trained with Mary Beale ), and her cousin Anne Osborne (the Clemena of her poetry).
Mills, Rebecca. "Thanks for that Elegant Defense": Polemical Prose and Poetry by Women in the Early Eighteenth Century. Oxford University.
152
She was a...
Textual Production Josephine Tey
JT , as Gordon Daviot, published Claverhouse, a life of John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee , who was first the scourge of the Covenanters , and then a Jacobite leader whose heroic...
Friends, Associates Jonathan Swift
Swift helped and befriended a number of women writers. He was a patron of Mary Barber , Constantia Grierson , an unidentified Mrs Sican , Mary Davys , and Laetitia Pilkington , a colleague of...
Textual Production Rosemary Sutcliff
Dundee began his distinguished military career as a scourge of the Covenanters . It was cut short at the battle of Killiecrankie where he was championing James II . His early death made him indelibly...
Textual Features G. B. Stern
GBS describes one of her own short stories in a manner that reflects oddly on the oblivion which enfolded earlier women writers during her career. The story concerns a beautiful, elegant young woman who feels...
Education Anna Seward
Anna's education was largely overseen by her parents. Before she was three she could recite passages from Milton 's L'Allegro and by nine the first three books of Paradise Lost.
Ashmun, Margaret. The Singing Swan. Yale University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press.
8
She was later...
Literary responses Sarah, Lady Piers
Thomas Colepeper , who recorded SLP 's marriage, called her a great poetess.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
She may well be one of the three Kentish women poets whom Anne Finch celebrated (along with herself) in The Circuit of...
Reception Sappho
Among the earliest of Sappho 's translators into English was Anne Finch ; among recent translators is Mary Barnard , 1958. Stevie Smith declined to take her on. Finch chose to render not a love-poem...
Textual Features Lady Margaret Sackville
The collection is dominated by nature imagery and the theme of escaping or hiding; most of the poems use traditional iambic couplets of either five or four feet. In Neglected Woods, the poet petitions...
Education Elizabeth Singer Rowe
Besides this, Henry Thynne , son of Viscount Weymouth of Longleat House (nephew by marriage of Anne Finch , and father of the future Lady Hertford ), taught ESR French and Italian. She read very...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Singer Rowe
ESR enjoyed important friendships from around the age of twenty with Anne Finch, Lady Winchilsea , and Lady Hertford . Finch was twelve years older than ESR , and Hertford twenty-five years younger. They each...

Timeline

1656: Abraham Cowley published Poems; this volume,...

Writing climate item

1656

Abraham Cowley published Poems; this volume, which included his Pindaric Odes and Miscellanies, confirmed his stature as the leading poet of the day.

1673: Molière's comedy Les Femmes savantes, first...

Writing climate item

1673

Molière 's comedyLes Femmes savantes, first staged the previous year, was published.

27 May 1682: Mary of Modena, wife of the future James...

National or international item

27 May 1682

Mary of Modena , wife of the future James II , arrived in England.

April 1684: Mr and Mrs Priest's school at Gorges House,...

Building item

April 1684

Mr and Mrs Priest's school at Gorges House, Chelsea, put on a private revival of the court masque Venus and Adonis, by John Blow (to a libretto perhaps by the future Anne Finch ).

27 July 1689: John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee,...

National or international item

27 July 1689

John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee , led a force of Scottish Highlanders loyal to James II against William ite English soldiers in the pass of Killiecrankie.

27 November 1703: The Great Storm hit much of Southern England,...

Building item

27 November 1703

The Great Storm hit much of Southern England, leaving many houses demolish'd and people kill'd.

2 May 1709: Poetical Miscellanies. The Sixth Part was...

Writing climate item

2 May 1709

Poetical Miscellanies. The Sixth Part was published, including Pope 's Pastorals and poems by Anne Finch (which are placed between work by Pope and Swift ).

December 1713: Richard Steele published Poetical Miscellanies;...

Writing climate item

December 1713

Richard Steele published Poetical Miscellanies; it included poems by Pope , Anne Finch , and himself (including praise of the unnamed and only recently identified young Elizabeth Tollet ).

1717: The worthy authors chosen for a miscellany...

Women writers item

1717

The worthy authors chosen for a miscellany entitled The Agreeable Variety by its female editor included Behn , Philips , Chudleigh , and Finch .

Christmas 1819: William Wordsworth presented Lady Mary Lowther...

Women writers item

Christmas 1819

William Wordsworth presented Lady Mary Lowther with a little manuscript volume of poems: those by women were mostly copied from the pages of Poems by Eminent Ladies.

Texts

Finch, Anne. Free-Thinkers. A Poem in Dialogue. Printed by the booksellers of London and Westminster, 1711.
Finch, Anne. “Introduction”. The Poems of Anne, Countess of Winchilsea, edited by Myra Reynolds, University of Chicago Press, 1903, p. xvii - cxxxiv.
Murry, John Middleton, and Anne Finch. “Introduction”. Poems by Anne, Countess of Winchilsea 1661-1720, Jonathan Cape, 1928, pp. 3-20.
Finch, Anne. “Introduction / Editors’ Note”. The Anne Finch Wellesley Manuscript Poems: A Critical Edition, edited by Barbara McGovern and Charles H. Hinnant, University of Georgia Press, 1998, p. xv - l.
Finch, Anne. Miscellany Poems, on Several Occasions. Printed for John Barber and sold by Benjamin Tooke, William Taylor, and James Round, 1713.
Wordsworth, William, and Anne Finch. Poems and Extracts Chosen by William Wordsworth for an Album presented to Lady Mary Lowther, Christmas 1819. Editor Littledale, Harold, H. Frowde, 1905.
Finch, Anne. The Anne Finch Wellesley Manuscript Poems: A Critical Edition. Editors McGovern, Barbara and Charles H. Hinnant, University of Georgia Press, 1998.
Finch, Anne. The Poems of Anne, Countess of Winchilsea. Editor Reynolds, Myra, University of Chicago Press, 1903.