Ashley Cowper
(1701-6 June 1788), another lawyer, preserved the family poetry archive. Of Ashley's daughters, Theodora or Theadora
and Harriet (later Lady Hesketh)
were successively involved, as beloved and as friend, with the poet William...
Friends, Associates
William Cowper
Notable among Cowper's other friends were the Rev John Newton
(a former slave-trader who since his conversion had become a hellfire Evangelical preacher), Lady Austen
(who set him the writing task commemorated in the title...
Friends, Associates
Catherine Fanshawe
CF
's friends included other highly literate middle-class women such as Mary Berry
and Anne Grant
in Edinburgh. (Her friendship with Grant was maintained entirely by correspondence—she and her sisters hoped to visit Edinburgh in...
Material Conditions of Writing
Catherine Fanshawe
In 1793, William Cowper
's friend Lady Hesketh
sent CF
a poem of Cowper's, with the request that she should not copy or circulate it. CF learned it by heart, then sent back the original...
Textual Production
Catherine Fanshawe
In 1793 CF
corresponded with William Cowper
's friend Lady Hesketh
, and through her, with Cowper himself. Mary Russell Mitford
concurs in calling CF
an excellent letter-writer.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Recollections of a Literary Life; or, Books, Places and People. R. Bentley, 1852, 3 vols.