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.
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...
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...
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/.
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...
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...
ESR
corresponded with Frances Seymour, Lady Hertford
, who was herself a poet and letter-writer.
Stecher, Henry F. Elizabeth Singer Rowe, the Poetess of Frome: A Study in Eighteenth-Century English Pietism. Herbert Lang.
62
Textual Production
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
ESR
's friend Lady Hertford
and her admirer Isaac Watts
published, by her desire, the first of her posthumous works: Devout Exercises of the Heart.
Stecher, Henry F. Elizabeth Singer Rowe, the Poetess of Frome: A Study in Eighteenth-Century English Pietism. Herbert Lang.
93
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
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...
Travel
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
She occasionally visited Lady Hertford
at Marlborough in Wiltshire.
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...
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...
Publishing
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
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...
