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.
Backscheider, Paula R. Elizabeth Singer Rowe and the Development of the English Novel. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Photograph of a line engraving of Elizabeth Singer Rowe by George Vertue, 1725, shown from the waist up, wearing a simple dark dress with a low scooped neckline. Her hair is tied back with a lock appearing over one shoulder. The oval frame (contained within a rectangle) bears her name, "Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe", and is topped with emblems including a sprig of laurel and a crown; a further swag of emblematic objects below includes flowers, sheets of inscribed paper, and the trumpet of Fame.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Penelope Aubin
PA 's latest novel, The Life of Charlotta Du Pont. An English Lady; Taken from her own Memoirs, was advertised with her name; it was dedicated to a Mrs Rowe.
The novel is available...
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...
Textual Features Penelope Aubin
This preface was responsible for floating the persistent rumour of an affinity between the writings of PA and those of Elizabeth Singer Rowe .
Intertextuality and Influence Anna Letitia Barbauld
ALB 's first hymn presents the world, as God creates and adorns it and pronounces it good, as a female body.
Duquette, Natasha Aleksiuk. Veiled Intent: Dissenting Women’s Approach to Biblical Interpretation. Pickwick Publications.
49-50
She is also alert to female precedents. Her Verses on Mrs Rowe recall...
Textual Features Mary Barber
To a Lady, who commanded me to send her an Account in Verse, how I succeeded in my Subscription anticipates Elizabeth Hands in satirical sketches of potential readers who scorn her efforts because of their...
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...
Textual Production Jane Brereton
Bibliographer David Foxon assigns this poem to Elizabeth Singer Rowe , whose name was written on to the title-page by a contemporary reader of a copy now at the University of Illinois , Urbana...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Jane Brereton
The book opens, like other posthumous collections, with a biographical memoir, in this case by JB 's daughter Charlotte, who reinforces the poet's own positioning of herself as Welsh, female, and modest. Envisaging potential hostility...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Jane Brereton
JB 's true attitude to her own poetic vocation is hard to fathom. In An Expostulatory Epistle to Sir Richard Steele upon the Death of Mr. Addison she calls herself the meanest of the tuneful...
Reception Elizabeth Bury
Among EB 's early readers was a Welshwoman of the next generation who in her turn became posthumously known as a diarist: Sarah Savage , 1664-1752, sister of that Matthew Henry whom both EB and...
Publishing Elizabeth Carter
This recently-founded publication, brainchild of Edward Cave , was the first example of the monthly periodical, the first to use the title magazine. EC 's earliest contribution, a riddle on subject of fire, was...
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
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...
Occupation Edmund Curll
Curll was apprenticed sometime around 1697 to 1699, and set up in business for himself by early 1706.
Baines, Paul, and Pat Rogers. Edmund Curll, Bookseller. Clarendon Press.
12, 22
He became a particularly agile entrepreneur with a nose for new market niches and an...
Reception Maria De Fleury
The later edition was noticed in the Analytical Review, probably by Wollstonecraft , as using tame and prosaic language, a faint imitation of Elizabeth Singer Rowe .
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Editors Todd, Janet and Marilyn Butler, Pickering.
81-2

Timeline

22 November 1599: Edward Fairfax licensed with the Stationers'...

Writing climate item

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...

Women writers item

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,...

Writing climate item

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,...

Building item

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...

Writing climate item

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...

Women writers item

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...

Writing climate item

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.

Texts

Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. Devout Exercises of the Heart. R. Hett, 1738.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. Friendship in Death. T. Worrall, 1728.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer, and Josephine Grieder. Friendship in Death. Garland Publishing, 1972.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. Letters Moral and Entertaining. T. Worrall, 1732.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. Philomela: or, Poems by Mrs. Elizabeth Singer (now Rowe). E. Curll, 1736.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. Poems on Several Occasions. John Dunton, 1696.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer, and Torquato Tasso. Select Translations from Tasso’s Jerusalem. E. Curll, 1738.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. The History of Joseph. A Poem. T. Worrall, 1736.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. The Miscellaneous Works in Prose and Verse of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe. Editor Rowe, Theophilus, R. Hett and R. Dodsley, 1739.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. The Poetry of Elizabeth Singer Rowe (1674-1737). Editor Marshall, Madeleine Forell, Edwin Mellen Press, 1987.
Rowe, Elizabeth Singer, and Thomas Rowe. The Works of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe. J. and A. Arch, 1796.