Anna Seward

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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.
Photograph of a painting of Anna Seward by Tilly Kettle, 1762. Seward is seated at a desk with a little book of Milton's poetry in front of her. She is wearing a white gauzy bodice with wide sleeves, a deep pink mantle edged with brown fur, and a black ribbon and a string of pearls as a choker around her neck. Her dark hair is pinned on top of her head with a pearl ornament. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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...
Textual Production Mary Bryan
The preface to the work writhes between expression and suppression. MB alternately fears being blamed for vanity or presumption
Bryan, Mary, and Jonathan Wordsworth. Sonnets and Metrical Tales 1815. Woodstock Books.
viii
and hints at her ambition, citing Charlotte Smith . She admires Smith for having succeeded...
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...
Friends, Associates Frances Brooke
As a result of her friendship with the musicologist Charles Burney (1726-1814), FB became a friend of his daughter Frances as well.
McMullen, Lorraine. An Odd Attempt in a Woman: The Literary Life of Frances Brooke. University of British Columbia Press.
135
Frances Burney liked Brooke, but was worried at her close friendship with...
Friends, Associates Frances Brooke
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...
Literary responses Frances Brooke
FB was listed by the Monthly Review as one of the nine British Muses in April 1774. Anna Seward in 1796 recorded her preference of the lively Brooke to Frances Burney , of whom each...
Friends, Associates Henrietta Maria Bowdler
Frances Burney preferred HMB , as more kind and gentle, to her sister Frances Bowdler. Burney amusingly records a visit by herself, HMB and others, to Lady Miller of Batheaston on 8 June 1780, when...
Textual Features Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
EOB writes in terms of a women's tradition: for instance, she praises Barbauld for praising Elizabeth Rowe . She makes confident judgements and attributions (she is sure that Lady Pakington is the real author of...
Literary responses Anna Letitia Barbauld
William Enfield quoted eight lines from Aikin (as Our Poetess) in dedicating his very popular anthology The Speaker, designed for the teaching of elocution, to the head of Warrington Academy . Her volume...
Literary responses Anna Letitia Barbauld
Literary admirers of the hymns included Hannah More , Anna Seward , and Elizabeth Carter , who found some passages amazingly sublime.
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
193
The innumerable children who loved and later remembered them included Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck
Literary responses Anne Bannerman
The notice in the Critical Review was uncomplimentary, dismissing her as an imitator of Scott , John Leyden , and William Wordsworth .
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
38 (1803): 110ff
Elfenbein, Andrew. Romantic Genius: The Prehistory of a Homosexual Role. Columbia University Press.
143
The Poetical Register praised the volume for poetical...
Textual Features Joanna Baillie
The poems present human shifts of mood and quirks of feeling. They are sensitively observed and charmingly written. The only modern poets she yet knew of to admire, JB said later, were William Hayley and...
Leisure and Society Jane Austen
Art historian Richard James Wheeler , a strong supporter of the Rice portrait, also argued that a watercolour sketch by James Stanier Clarke , the Prince of Wales's librarian (a full-length portrait of only six...

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