Torquato Tasso

The action of this novel takes place in many different parts of Italy. Its features include a mystery over the heroine's birth (her mother was an escaped nun and her father was burned by...

One month before writing this poem Elizabeth Smith met Mary Hunt , with whom she was soon maintaining a scholarly correspondence. In the earliest letter which Bowdler prints (written on 7 July 1792), Smith touches...

In a critical preface HS reveals her gender though not her name. She opens by invoking the author of Rienzi (either, Mary Russell Mitford or Edward Bulwer Lytton ). The two groups of lovers and...

Freya had a German governess until the age of eight, and then an Italian governess who stayed until she was fourteen. More importantly, Freya was close to her grandmother Madeleine Stark , who read...

SW worked hard for three months at translating Tasso 's Jerusalem and Verri 's Roman Nights; she had already done some translation from Tasso in about 1786.

SW 's choice of originals shows the catholicity of her tastes: on the one hand a Renaissance work (of which the standard English version was by John Hoole , 1763) and on the other Le...

After the pasted-in pages and a section devoted to Tasso , the volume moves to a poem modelled on the tabular lists of good and evil in his life that are kept by Defoe 's...

HW says she has more respect for the upper classes than some of our modern reformists. She recommends reading poetry and history, not novels: Novel reading tends to enervate the mind. We rise from...