Pope's relationships with women, particularly women who wrote, tended to be complicated and turbulent. They have been ably studied by scholar Valerie Rumbold
. Contrary to rumour, he apparently liked and respected Anne Finch
...
Literary responses
Judith Cowper Madan
Roger Lonsdale
in 1990 followed Falconer Madan
in supposing that her child-bearing and the influence of John Wesley
and the Methodists
amounted to sufficient explanation for her ceasing to write. Valerie Rumbold
suggested in 1996...
Literary responses
Mary Caesar
Valerie Rumbold
noted the allusions and double meanings with which MC
offered the pleasures of complicity and solidarity to imagined readers (even though it seems likely that her husband was the only person to read...
Literary responses
Jane Wiseman
JW
may perhaps have been one of those lampooned by Alexander Pope
in his Dunciad, though if so his draft reference to her was dropped before the poem was published. Critic Valerie Rumbold
notes...
Literary responses
Mary Leapor
The emphasis placed on ML
by Roger Lonsdale
in his revolutionary Eighteenth-Century Women Poets, 1989, was welcomed by reviewers.
Leapor, Mary. “Introduction”. Poems, edited by Ann Messenger and Richard Greene, 2003.
Donna Landry
, virtually originating the late twentieth-century interest in labouring-class women poets of this...
Literary responses
Judith Cowper Madan
Rumbold
has remarked that JCM
is not assertive enough for a satirist: that her poem on Philips lacks force.
Rumbold, Valerie. “The Poetic Career of Judith Cowper: An Exemplary Failure?”. Pope, Swift, and Women Writers, edited by Donald C. Mell, University of Delaware Press, 1996, pp. 48-66.
61
Literary responses
Judith Cowper Madan
Falconer Madan
wrote that this poem had in parts real merit—which for him is high praise.
Madan, Falconer. The Madan Family. Oxford University Press, 1933.
265
Valerie Rumbold
has observed that JCM
's Abelard voices her own anxiety for moral closure
Rumbold, Valerie. “The Poetic Career of Judith Cowper: An Exemplary Failure?”. Pope, Swift, and Women Writers, edited by Donald C. Mell, University of Delaware Press, 1996, pp. 48-66.
65
and...
Literary responses
Judith Cowper Madan
In Pope
's lines Cowper (mild, sober, serene, virgin) thus becomes the acceptable female poet, in contrast with the unacceptable Montagu, who shines, glares, and strikes the eye.
qtd. in
Rumbold, Valerie. “The Poetic Career of Judith Cowper: An Exemplary Failure?”. Pope, Swift, and Women Writers, edited by Donald C. Mell, University of Delaware Press, 1996, pp. 48-66.
53
Since...
Textual Features
Frances Lady Norton
Memento Mori has a frontispiece depicting Lady Gethin
's happy death. In her dedicatory epistle, FLN
says that Gethin was not only my Only One, but in all Particulars an Extraordinary One.
Norton, Frances, Lady. Memento Mori. J. Graves, 1705.
prelims
The body...
Textual Production
Judith Cowper Madan
Valerie Rumbold
concluded her ODNB entry: much of Madan's most interesting work remains unpublished.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Rumbold, Valerie. “Cut the Caterwauling: Women Writers (Not) in Popes Dunciads”. Review of English Studies, Vol.
new series 52
, No. 208, pp. 524-39.
Rumbold, Valerie. “The Alienated Insider: Mary Leapor in ’Crumble Hall’”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
19
, No. 1, pp. 63-76.
Rumbold, Valerie. “The Jacobite vision of Mary Caesar”. Women, Writing, History, 1640-1740, edited by Isobel Grundy and Susan Wiseman, Batsford, 1992, pp. 178-98.
Rumbold, Valerie. “The Poetic Career of Judith Cowper: An Exemplary Failure?”. Pope, Swift, and Women Writers, edited by Donald C. Mell, University of Delaware Press, 1996, pp. 48-66.
Rumbold, Valerie. “Women Writers in Popes DunciadWomen and Literary History Conference, Edmonton, AB.
Rumbold, Valerie. Women’s Place in Pope’s World. Cambridge University Press, 1989.
