Backscheider, Paula R. Elizabeth Singer Rowe and the Development of the English Novel. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
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Standard Name: Rowe, Elizabeth Singer
Birth Name: Elizabeth Singer
Married Name: Elizabeth Rowe
Pseudonym: Philomela
Pseudonym: The Pindarick Lady
Pseudonym: The Pindarical Lady
Pseudonym: The Author of Friendship in Death
ESR
wrote witty, topical, satirical poetry during the 1690s, followed later in life by letters, essays, fiction (often epistolary), and a wide range of poetic modes, often though not invariably with a moral or religious emphasis. Her reputation as a moral and devotional writer during her lifetime and for some time afterwards stood extremely high. Current critical debate is establishing the element of proto-feminist or amatory fiction (what Paula Backscheider
calls experimental, subversive, and transgressive) in her prose against the didactic-devotional element.
Connections
Connections Sort descending | Author name | Excerpt |
---|---|---|
Anthologization | Sarah, Lady Pennington | An Unfortunate Mother's Advice to her Absent Daughters quickly became a staple of composite volumes directed toward young women's conduct. At Edinburgh a volume of this kind, Instructions for a Young Lady, in every sphere... |
Education | Eliza Fletcher | Grandmother Brudend and a paternal aunt educated Eliza with poetry and stories. The letters of Elizabeth Singer Rowe
were important in her reading. It was said, however, that her grandmother over-encouraged her in precocious display... |
Education | Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford | Frances became well versed in most kinds of books, as well as good at dancing. Hughes, Helen Sard. The Gentle Hertford, Her Life and Letters. Macmillan, 1940. 7 |
Family and Intimate relationships | Elizabeth Graeme Ferguson | Her mother, born Ann Diggs, was stepdaughter of the first colonial governor of Pennsylvania. Ann died in 1765, and like Elizabeth Singer Rowe
(and Richardson
's Clarissa) she left posthumous letters for delivery after her death. Garraty, John A., and Mark C. Carnes, editors. American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 1999. Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990. |
Family and Intimate relationships | Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford | The writer Elizabeth Singer Rowe
was, says a recent commentator, like an honorary aunt to the young Frances Thynne. Kennedy, Deborah. Poetic Sisters. Early Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. Bucknell University Press, 2013. 14 |
Family and Intimate relationships | Elizabeth Thomas | He had published a poem in praise of Elizabeth Singer
, and wrote to Lipking, Joanna. “Fair Originals: Women Poets in Male Commendatory Poems”. Studies in the Eighteenth Century: Papers Presented at the . . . David Nichol Smith Memorial Seminar, No. 12:2, pp. 58 -72. 67, 71n19 |
Friends, Associates | Penelope Aubin | It is not known that PA
had writing friends or moved in literary circles. Though the Feminist Companion and other sources call her a friend of Elizabeth Singer Rowe
, this is based on a... |
Friends, Associates | Anne Finch | AF
enjoyed personal friendships with a number of distinguished men, among them Bishop Thomas Ken
. She valued female friendship very highly; women friends figure prominently in her poetry. Lady Catherine Jones
, to whom... |
Friends, Associates | Catherine Talbot | CT
met the widowed Duchess of Somerset (better known by her former title of Lady Hertford
), who had been a patron of Elizabeth (Singer) Rowe
, and was herself an amateur writer. Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon, 1990. 215 |
Friends, Associates | Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford | The young Frances Thynne grew up in a literary ambience. Her early friends included Frances Worsley, later Lady Carteret
(who apparently patronised women writers later, when her husband was Viceroy of Ireland). Family friends from... |
Friends, Associates | Mary Chandler | MC
seems to have become the real friend of several women of higher rank than herself, some of whom moved from the position of her customers to that of her patrons: they included Lady Hertford |
Friends, Associates | Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford | Lady Hertford wrote that a certain distrust of her own judgement made her slow in the choice of a friend; but when that choice is made, my attachments are too strong to be easily broken... |
Intertextuality and Influence | Harriet Corp | The preface discusses what makes a religious novel. Corp suspects her work is not a novel because of its lack of a love-plot. But if she must be classed with novel-writers, she will submit with... |
Intertextuality and Influence | Mary Deverell | The additional material keeps up the feminist interest. On Thanksgiving is headed by a quotation from Elizabeth Rowe
, and offers examples of thankfulness in female worthies of the Bible, like Deborah, Judith, Esther... |
Intertextuality and Influence | Clara Reeve | Charoba is CR
's retelling of a story which she almost certainly found in Elizabeth Singer Rowe
's History of Joseph. She builds here on Rowe (rather than on Bishop Lowth
) in suggesting... |
Timeline
22 November 1599
Edward Fairfax
licensed with the Stationers' Company
his Godfrey of Bulloigne, or The Recouerie of Jerusalem, his translation of Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso
(1581), which was published in 1600.
25 June 1652
Eliza's Babes, or The Virgins-Offering, a book of poetry, was published now (according to George Thomason
): the work of an anonymous Lady, who onely desires to advance the glory of God, and not her own.
1670
Les Pensées de M. Pascal
sur la réligion, et sur quelques autres sujets was posthumously published: it takes the form of a collection of aphorisms and very brief essays.
By May 1754
John Duncombe
published The Feminiad. A Poem, which celebrates the achievements of women writers with strict attention to their support for conventional morality.
January 1781-December 1782
The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties of British Poetry appeared, published by James Harrison
in four half-yearly numbers; it is arguable whether or not it kept the first number's promise of generous selections of work...
After 1 February 1785
M. Peddle
(a gifted, little-known, Evangelical woman of Yeovil in Somerset, who later issued a conduct book under the name of Cornelia) published a biblical paraphrase in novelistic style: The Life of Jacob.
June 1793
An enterprising printer and freemason, John Wharlton Bunney
, put out the first number of The Free-Mason's Magazine, or General and Complete Library.