Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
-
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.
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
Elizabeth Elstob
Begun in order to help the work of a female student, this work reiterates more strongly EE
's plea for opening the arena of scholarship to women. For examples of poetic practice she turns to...
Publishing
Elizabeth Elstob
Its full title is An English-Saxon Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory
, Anciently used in the English-Saxon Church. Giving an Account of the Conversion of the English from Paganism to Christianity. It...
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.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anne Finch
Although AF
is often thought of as a writer of pastoral, on account of the fame of A Noctural Reverie, this mode is fairly rare in her work. She is a very social poet....
Reception
Anne Finch
Finch gave a copy of her pindaric Upon the Hurricane to Elizabeth Singer
, who responded warmly.
Kennedy, Deborah. Poetic Sisters. Early Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. Bucknell University Press.
68
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
Her favourite topics—religious devotion, social interaction, and landscape description—are frequently linked. She hopes that contemplating the beauties of nature will lead her thoughts to their Creator, or draws moral lessons from particular natural effects, like...
Literary responses
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
Elizabeth Rowe
, in proposing that she should pass this, in manuscript, to Watts, said he would be as proud as if an angel had given him a wreath of immortal amaranthus.
Hughes, Helen Sard. The Gentle Hertford, Her Life and Letters. Macmillan.
354
Textual Production
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
It was in this year that Lord Winchilsea
told Lady Hertford how pleased his late wife (the poet Anne Finch
) would have been with her achievement. At about the same period Elizabeth Singer Rowe
Textual Production
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
Frances Hertford and Elizabeth Singer Rowe
had each urged the other to publish her work. After Rowe's death Hertford joined with Isaac Watts
in posthumous editing of Rowe for print.
Textual Production
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
Frances, Countess of Hertford
, composed an elegy on her literary mentor: Verses to the Memory of Mrs. Rowe
by a Friend.
Hughes, Helen Sard. The Gentle Hertford, Her Life and Letters. Macmillan.
354 and n10
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.
14
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.
7
Her books included history, theology, and romances—almost every subject except philosophy. Her father
had taught Italian to the poet...
