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.
Hannah More
and Anna Seward
were among the invited guests. The anecdotalist Baptist Noel Turner
later related from FB
's own mouth a story of Johnson asking her to withdraw from the others so that...
Friends, Associates
Mary Scott
MS
was probably a friend from an early age of the dissenting hymn-writer Anne Steele
, who lived not very far away and who was a generation older. They spent much time together in 1773...
Friends, Associates
Frances Jacson
The Jacson sisters became acquainted with the literary circle in Lichfield which also included Erasmus Darwin
, Anna Seward
, and Thomas Day
, as well as their cousin Sir Brooke Boothby
, who probably introduced them there.
Shteir, Ann B. “Botanical Dialogues: Maria Jacson and Women’s Popular Science Writing in England”. Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
23
, No. 3, pp. 301-17.
308
Fictionalization
Frances Burney
Bibliographer James Raven
notes a crescendo in novelistic echoes of FB
's works during the 1780s. Burney's brother Charles
, for instance, noted borrowings from both Evelina and Cecilia in his review for the Monthly...
Family and Intimate relationships
Fanny Holcroft
Thomas Holcroft held progressive ideas about women and their education, as he showed in 1794 in a brief review of Miss or Mrs. C. Short
's Dramas for the Use of Young Ladies (to which...
Family and Intimate relationships
Mary Scott
MS
's father was a linen manufacturer, a Dissenter according to most accounts, and a zealous supporter of the civil and religious liberties of Protestant dissenters. Among his brothers was the Rev. Russell Scott
...
Education
Mary Scott
Little is known of MS
's education, but her correspondence with Anna Seward
suggests familiarity with both classic and recent literature. Further, the knowledge she displays in The Female Advocate of women's writing in particular...
Dedications
Margaret Holford
The elder Margaret Holford
published with her name, through the Minerva Press
, First Impressions; or, The Portrait. A Novel, in four volumes, dedicated to Anna Seward
.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
2: 135-6
Dedications
Margaret Holford
Published by Hookham and Carpenter
, this was a slim volume of 44 pages, with a title-page quotation from Pope
's Windsor Forest, and a handsome illustration of Gresford Lodge near Wrexham in Denbighshire...
death
Anna Miller
She was buried in Bath Abbey, with a poetic epitaph by Anna Seward
.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
death
Mary Scott
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
Cultural formation
Mary Delany
In Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes, 2011, Lisa L. Moore
classified MD
, along with the Duchess of Portland
, Anna Seward
, and the American Sarah Pierce
(1767-1852), as lesbian-like women...
Cultural formation
Mary Scott
MS
grew up in a prosperous, middle-class household, in which religion was the centre of everyday life and activity. Most sources agree that her family were Protestant Dissenters.
