Elizabeth Singer Rowe

11 September 1674 - 20 February 1737

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, 2013.

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Connections

Connections	Author name Sort descending	Excerpt
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Mary Seymour Montague	The third epistle performs the conventional act of praising historical women: the monarchs Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great of Russia for their exercise of power, the French scholar Anne Dacier , and eleven British...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Judith Sargent Murray	She backs this pleasure in modernity with a remarkable grasp of former female history and of the women's literary tradition in English and its contexts. She mentions the Greek foremother Sappho , the patriotic heroism...
Intertextuality and Influence	Adelaide O'Keeffe	This book might be regarded as a work of ancient Jewish history; it is also highly relevant to experiments in the possible reach of the historical novel back into ancient times. As a biblical paraphrase...
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...
Textual Features	Clara Reeve	CR demonstrates the widest possible reading: from Homer , Virgil and Horace (all revered) and Juvenal and Persius (used to prove that not all classical authors are admirable) through the heroic romances like those of...
Textual Features	Samuel Richardson	With her death Clarissa consolidates her position as Christian heroine and something close to a martyr. Her long struggle with the sin of spiritual pride (the ambition to be, as she can perceive that she...
Textual Features	Mary Robinson	To demonstrate, as well as arguing for, mental equality, MR learnedly surveys the course of political and literary history. She honours many women writers of the past (Aphra Behn and Susanna Centlivre as well...
Textual Features	Susanna Haswell Rowson	The heroine, Meriel Howard (educated in a French convent, aged sixteen at the outset, correspondent of her school-friend Celia Shelburne) is not wholly free from error, yet provides a good model for a daughter, wife...
Textual Features	Susanna Haswell Rowson	Contents include lives of Elizabeth Singer Rowe and of Mary Wollstonecraft (the latter reprinted from the Monthly Visitor of London). Among the poems (some of them specifically attributed to SHR ) are one entitled...
Intertextuality and Influence	Sarah Savage	The diary also records SS 's delight in such biographical religious texts as the Lives of Mrs. Bury , Mrs. Rowe , Mrs. Walker . Williams, Sir John Bickerton, and Sarah Savage. Memoirs of the Life and Character of Mrs. Sarah Savage. 4th ed., Holdsworth and Ball, 1829. 30 Women's writing on pious topics was important to her...
Residence	Mary Scott	In 1788, after her marriage, MS and her husband moved to Ilminster in Somerset, where they lived in the house formerly occupied by the poet and (in Anna Seward's words) dear fascinating enthusiastic saint...
Textual Features	Elizabeth Smith	Smith's preface, which discusses theology and Klopstock's admiration for Elizabeth Singer Rowe , clearly indicates a hope of publishing. The body of the book consists chiefly the Klopstock letters, including those addressed by him to...
Intertextuality and Influence	Anne Steele	AS was said to have begun writing poetry at a very early age. Steele, Anne. The Works of Mrs. Anne Steele. Munroe, Francis and Parker, 1808, 2 vols. prelims Her surviving works show the influence of Elizabeth Singer Rowe , who shares her heightened devotional style in both verse and...
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
Intertextuality and Influence	Catherine Talbot	Her recent visit to the Duchess of Somerset (formerly Lady Hertford, whose little grandson and great-nephew were the good and naughty boys of the story) had exposed her to the influence of Elizabeth Singer Rowe

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