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.
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...
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...
Leisure and Society
Anne Finch
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
...
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.
158
This reads like...
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
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
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
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.
215
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...
