Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
Frances Thynne, later Hertford, began letter-writing at an early age. She was eleven when her grandfather
was glad to find her in an hopeful way of being a good scribe,
Hughes, Helen Sard. The Gentle Hertford, Her Life and Letters. Macmillan.
7
and twelve when her...
Literary responses
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
The writing of verse began in Frances Thynne's life almost as early as the writing of letters: it must have been a poem rather than a letter that evoked from Elizabeth Singer Rowe
the response:...
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