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.
AF
was painted in a miniature by Peter Cross
(now in the National Portrait Gallery
) round about 1690. She left another, later miniature of her by Zincke
in her will to Lady Hertford
...
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...
Literary responses
Susanna Haswell Rowson
Charlotte Temple has received a great deal of recent critical attention. Steven Epley
has discerned a possible connection with Inkle and Yarico (which he classes as folk legend).
Epley, Steven. “Alienated, Betrayed, and Powerless: A Possible Connection between Charlotte Temple and the Legend of Inkle and Yarico”. Papers on Language and Literature, Vol.
The Monthly Review found the heroine of this book more interesting than Betsy Thoughtless (with better character-drawing but a continued deficiency in plot and sentiments. It conceded that the whole was doubtless much superior to...
Publishing
Judith Cowper Madan
Pattison died of smallpox in July this year, aged about twenty-one.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Rowe herself wrote to Lady Hertford
in relation to this publication that she was entirely ignorant of Curll's romance of my life and writings except for an advertisement; that she had written and positively denied...
Publishing
Sarah Scott
It was published anonymously. The French original was current in England at this time, since the Duchess of Somerset
(patron and poet, formerly Lady Hertford) read and enjoyed it in the year before Scott's translation...
Publishing
Mary Jones
This volume was dedicated to the Princess of Orange
: Anne, daughter of George II
and the late Queen Caroline
. The princess's mother had been a patron of MJ
's friend Martha Lovelace, later...
Publishing
Mary Leapor
The arrangements for publication had not been entirely smooth sailing. ML
was insulted when Freemantle predicted that the book might make her £10.
Rizzo, Betty. “Molly Leapor: An Anxiety for Influence”. The Age of Johnson, edited by Paul J. Korshin, Vol.
4
, pp. 313-43.
322
Freemantle was nevertheless instrumental in persuading her to publish and in...
Publishing
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
ESR
often sent her poetry to her friends in the course of her letters. Many poems later included in Letters Moral and Entertaining (published in 1729-32) are to be found in Lady Hertford
's letter-book...
Reception
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
The same month Benjamin Colman
's tribute was published on the front page of the Boston Weekly News-Letter.
Stecher, Henry F. Elizabeth Singer Rowe, the Poetess of Frome: A Study in Eighteenth-Century English Pietism. Herbert Lang.
77
In March, the Gentleman's Magazine had already printed a notice of Rowe's death and a...
Textual Features
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
All the mock eclogues (written, like most of Montagu's more ambitious poetry, in heroic couplets with the occasional triplet) target actual individuals and refer to events which were gossip of the day. Monday, Wednesday...
Textual Features
Anne Finch
Many of the poems in this volume are political (Jacobite) or religious in feeling. To the Right Honourable Frances Countess of Hartford is a playful warning to a very young patron to not degrade support...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
This volume (seen through the press by Theophilus Rowe
) prints in edited and sometimes re-arranged form many of ESR
's actual letters to Lady Hertford
, many of which incorporate poems and some of...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
The second edition, published the following year, added two more books.
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.
Bigold, Melanie. Emails to Isobel Grundy about Trotter, Carter, and Rowe.
ESR
had written most of this poem years earlier. The last two books were written in no more than two days. The whole was...
