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.
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...
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...
Textual Features
Sarah, Lady Pennington
She advises about relations with servants, about prompt payment of bills, and other aspects of running a complicated household. She says there will always be vacant Hours to fill up with reading,
Sarah, Lady Pennington,. An Unfortunate Mother’s Advice to her Absent Daughters. W. Bristow and C. Ethrington.
38
and offers...
Textual Features
Sarah, Lady Pennington
Yet another thread relates an inset story, The Adventures of Alphonso, after the destruction of Lisbon, related by himself, in a letter to his Brother, 1756; this fiction purports to be the first-fruits of...
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. Holdsworth and Ball.
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.
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.
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
