Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Anna Seward
-
Standard Name: Seward, Anna
Birth Name: Anna Seward
Nickname: The Swan of Lichfield
Nickname: Nancy
AS
, living at a distance from London, was nevertheless a woman of letters, of the later eighteenth century and just beyond. She staked her claim to fame firstly on her poetry (though she was always willing to try genres unusual to her, like sermons and a biography of Erasmus Darwin
), secondly on her letters. In these and in her newspaper contributions she was also a literary critic, familiar with the criteria of both the Augustan and Romantic eras and gifted besides with an unfailing independence of judgement.
Again this work generated both a flood of praise (much of it in letters, some coming from religious leaders or from royalty) and a storm of criticism and abuse.
Jones, Mary Gwladys. Hannah More. Cambridge University Press.
120
The Bishop of London...
Reception
Hannah Glasse
This book came to dominate its field. It was widely believed in the book-trade to be the work of a man. The publisher Edward Dilly
in 1778 informed a gathering which included Samuel Johnson
and...
Publishing
Helen Maria Williams
It appeared in two volumes from Cadell
. It was advertised in March, and in April Williams sent a copy to Anna Seward
.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
1: 519
Michael-Johnston, Georgina. Helen Maria Williams: Liberty, Sensibility, and Education. University of Alberta.
149, 156
A prefatory Advertisement says that her materials...
Publishing
Mary Martha Sherwood
MMS
wrote later, It was a matter of course to me that I was to write, and also a matter of instinct. My head was always busy in inventions, and it was a delight to...
Publishing
Mary Scott
The Gentleman's Magazine printed MS
's Verses Addressed to Miss Seward
, on the Publication of her Monody on Major André.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Publishing
Charlotte Brooke
Her father had cherished a never-executed project for a history of ancient Irish literature.
Ashley, Leonard R. N. et al. “Introduction”. Reliques of Irish Poetry, Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, p. v - xv.
vi
She had issued Proposals for this work the year before publication. The Houghton Library
copy of the Proposals incorporates a...
Publishing
Helen Maria Williams
HMW
published her Poem on the Bill Lately Passed for Regulating the Slave Trade. (The bill was that of Sir William Dolben
.) She sent a copies of her poem to Robert Burns
(who...
Publishing
Elizabeth Hands
The advertisement for the book in print, like the pre-notification, was carried by Jopson's Coventry Mercury. The volume was dedicated to the dramatist Bertie Greatheed
. It was issued in two forms: ordinary copies...
The Batheaston Vase was important in several literary careers, notably those of Anna Seward
, Jane Bowdler
, and Mary Alcock
. Other winners, like Jane Johnson
's daughter Barbara
, seem never to have...
Literary responses
Ann Radcliffe
Again she had the lead review spot in the Critical, which loved the book and quoted at length.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
2d ser. 14 (1795): 241-55
The British Critic also praised it, but some papers regretted that...
Literary responses
Ann Radcliffe
Anna Seward
, in letters which were to be published in AR
's lifetime, mixed her praise of her gothic oeuvre with some trenchant criticism.
Norton, Rictor. Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. Leicester University Press.
More
and Elizabeth Montagu
admired AY
as a primitive, untrained writer whose excellence came from nature, not from carefully nurtured ability: as a phenomenon verging on a freak. More's Prefatory Letter to Yearsley's Poems, on...