Frances Seymour Countess of Hertford

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Standard Name: Hertford, Frances Seymour,,, Countess of
Birth Name: Frances Thynne
Married Name: Frances Seymour
Titled: Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
Titled: Frances Seymour, Duchess of Somerset
Nickname: Fanny
Pseudonym: Eusebia
Nickname: Renée
Used Form: Renee
Living an upper-class life in the eighteenth century, Lady Hertford did not publish; her patronage activity was as important as her writing. But as well as letters, a fragmentary political journal, and commonplace-books, she wrote poems, some of which, circulating in manuscript, drifted into print in her lifetime, while a few achieved some notoriety. She claimed that she wrote for her own pleasure and found it easy to suppress any stirrings of ambition.
Kennedy, Deborah. Poetic Sisters. Early Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. Bucknell University Press, 2013.
112
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford's two anti-slavery poems "The Story of Inkle and Yarico" and "An Epistle from Yarico to Inkle, after he had sold her for a Slave", published in 1725, had a long afterlife on the page and in the theatre. The operatic version dates from 1787. This print, which illustrated an undated edition in Dutch, shows Inkle, arrived in Jamaica, selling his pregnant native American lover and rescuer.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Dedications Elizabeth Boyd
She dedicated it to her patron Lady Hertford . The British Library copy is 12604 ccc. 7. Harvard University holds the only known copy of an undated set of subscription proposals, which is headed Any...
Dedications Charlotte Lennox
The full title was Memoirs for the History of Madame de Maintenon and of the last age; Lennox published it as the author of The Female Quixote. The price was fifteen shillings; the...
Dedications Dorothea Du Bois
She dedicated it to Lady Hertford . A manuscript note on the title-page of the British Library copy says, containing her own Life and Adventures;
Du Bois, Dorothea. Theodora. Printed for the author by C. Kiernan, 1770, 2 vols.
title-page manuscript note
on the verso the same hand...
Dedications Elizabeth Singer Rowe
Watts wrote that he had finished revising her papers on 13 October. Lady Hertford (who had declined to be named in a dedication) wrote on 27 October to thank for the eventual dedication to her...
Education Elizabeth Grant
EG refers to a number of texts that influenced her as a child. She learned to read by the age of three, taught by loving aunts, and remembered in particular Puss in Boots, Bluebeard...
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 Catherine Talbot
CT met the widowed Duchess of Somerset (better known by her former title of Lady Hertford ), who had been a patron of Elizabeth (Singer) Rowe , and was herself an amateur writer.
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon, 1990.
215
Friends, Associates Jane Johnson
Woolsey Johnson was succeeded in his living at Olney by the Evangelically-inclined minor poet Moses Browne (a protégé of Lady Hertford ). Both Johnsons differed doctrinally from Browne, and were soon at open enmity with...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Boyd
She nevertheless accumulated a remarkable list of patrons for someone without obvious connections or advantages. She mentions real interest taken in her and her writing by John, second Duke of Argyll , William Stanhope, Earl of Harrington
Friends, Associates Mary Chandler
MC seems to have become the real friend of several women of higher rank than herself, some of whom moved from the position of her customers to that of her patrons: they included Lady Hertford
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...
Friends, Associates Jean Marishall
While in LondonJM was in touch with a long list of patrons or prospective patrons, including those eminent in both the social and literary worlds. The socially prominent included (as well as a colonel...
Friends, Associates Anne Finch
AF enjoyed personal friendships with a number of distinguished men, among them Bishop Thomas Ken . She valued female friendship very highly; women friends figure prominently in her poetry. Lady Catherine Jones , to whom...
Intertextuality and Influence Catherine Talbot
Her recent visit to the Duchess of Somerset (formerly Lady Hertford, whose little grandson and great-nephew were the good and naughty boys of the story) had exposed her to the influence of Elizabeth Singer Rowe
Intertextuality and Influence Caroline Bowles
The melodramatic sketch Pride and Passion relates how the engagement of Hargrave and Helena is broken after Hargrave reveals the story of his past romance with Abra, a poor Mulatto girl.
Bowles, Caroline. The Widow’s Tale and Other Poems. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1822.
158
This reads like...

Timeline

12 June 1724: Frances Seymour, Lady Hertford reported that...

Building item

12 June 1724

Frances Seymour, Lady Hertford reported that the English Court had almost universally taken to wearing French fashions.
Hughes, Helen Sard. The Gentle Hertford, Her Life and Letters. Macmillan, 1940.
86

March 1748: The Poems of Thomas Warton the elder were...

Writing climate item

March 1748

The Poems of Thomas Warton the elder were published by subscription.
Reid, Hugh. “’Those beck’ning ghost(s)’: The Subscribers to Thomas Warton’s Poems(1748)”. English Studies in Canada, Vol.
25
, Sept.–Dec. 1999, pp. 277-94.
277-8, 283-4

12 February 1765: Thomas Percy published his edited Reliques...

Writing climate item

12 February 1765

Thomas Percy published his edited Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, a rediscovery of poems from the middle ages. He dedicated it to the Duchess of Northumberland , daughter of the poet and letter-writer Lady Hertford

September 1770: It was rumoured that the Duke and Duchess...

Building item

September 1770

It was rumoured that the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland planned to hold not one but two Public Days a week.
The duchess was a letter-writer of note; her mother, as Lady Hertford , had...

2 September 1788: The theatre at Richmond, Yorkshire, opened...

Building item

2 September 1788

The theatre at Richmond, Yorkshire, opened with George Colman 's Inkle and Yarico.
Theatre personnel,. Information from theatre personnel about Richmond Theatre to Isobel Grundy. 13 Aug. 1998.
The Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond, (Richmond Theatre) North Yorkshire, UK. http://www.georgiantheatreroyal.co.uk/.

Texts

Hertford, Frances Seymour, Countess of, and Henrietta Louisa Fermor, Countess of Pomfret. Correspondence between Frances, Countess of Hartford and Henrietta Louisa, Countess of Pomfret. Richard Phillips, 1805, 3 vols.
Hertford, Frances Seymour, Countess of. “Inkle and Yarico: An Epistle from Yarico to Inkle”. A New Miscellany: Being a Collection of Pieces of Poetry, T. Warner, 1725.
Hertford, Frances Seymour, Countess of. The Story of Inkle and Yarrico. J. Cooper, 1738.