Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
-
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.
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.
title-page manuscript note
on the verso the same hand...
Literary responses
Mary Collyer
The pious Duchess of Somerset
(formerly Lady Hertford, a respected patron and poet) skimmed this novel as it passed from hand to hand in her circle (at the end of its publication year) but assured...
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
Textual Production
Elizabeth Carter
The work she translated was Algarotti
's Italian version of Newton
's Optics. The project of translating back from the Italian popularisation of this famous work was recommended to her by Thomas Birch
....
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...
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.