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.
Anna Seward
addressed her an anxious letter dated 10 September, obviously having not yet learned about her death.
Seward, Anna. Letters of Anna Seward. Editor Constable, Archibald, Vol.
6 vols.
, A. Constable.
3: 310
Friends, Associates
Mary Martha Sherwood
MMS
judged Anna Seward
to be greedy for flattery, especially from the opposite sex. In 1799 she met Hannah More
, who was then at the height of her fame and to whom admittance was...
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...
Literary responses
Charlotte Smith
Anna Seward
included CS
in her list of living celebrated Female Poets
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
(1789): 292
but spoiled the effect by mistakenly calling her Catherine.
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
(1789): 292
Literary responses
Charlotte Smith
The young Jane Austen
paid Emmeline the compliment of allusion in her comical History of England, 1791.Anna Seward
, on the other hand, condemned CS
for indelicacy because she had exposed her husband's...
Textual Features
Charlotte Smith
In this book the ancient and imposing but crumbling manor house is an emblem of English society as a whole: a trope which was to be popular with later novelists. The downtrodden orphan heroine, Monimia...
Textual Production
Anne Steele
AS
exchanged occasional poems over the span of her life with other women in her circle of correspondents: primarily her sister Mary Steele, later Wakeford
, whom she called Amira, but also her niece...
Friends, Associates
Anne Steele
AS
evidently chose her friends at least partly for their literary interests, since they included three publishing women of a younger generation—Hannah More
, Anna Seward
, and (a closer friend than the first...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Strutt
ES
balances her story of love and adventure with the depiction of everyday life in a Scottish castle, including food, clothing, pastimes, heraldry, and chivalric tournaments,
Stevens, Anne. “Tales of Other Times: A Survey of British Historical Fiction, 1770-1812”. Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, Vol.
It is often said (for instance by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography) that Topham's main aim in this venture was to boost her career. The World was known for featuring personal attacks on...
Mavor, Elizabeth. The Ladies of Llangollen. Michael Joseph.
126
Friends, Associates
Mary Tighe
Before she left London, MT
met there her fellow Irish poet Tom Moore
. He subsequently visited her in Dublin and complimented her in verse. She exchanged poems with Barbarina Wilmot (later Lady Dacre)
...
Intertextuality and Influence
Annie Tinsley
Set seventy years earlier, thus at the close of the eighteenth century, it features a suitor who professedly did not understand poetry, and who questioned the right of a woman to waste her time in...
Friends, Associates
Melesina Trench
In England and (especially) Ireland her friends (with whom she kept up largely by correspondence) included a number of other amateur writers: Mary Leadbeater
(from 1802), Lady Eleanor Butler
and Sarah Ponsonby
(the Ladies of...
Literary responses
Melesina Trench
One of those the few who noticed and admired her poetry was Anna Seward
.
Kittredge, Katharine. “Melesina Chenevix St. John Trench (1768-1827)”. The Female Spectator (1995-), Vol.
