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.
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...
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
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...
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...
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...
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
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:...
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...
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...
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...
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.
She is also alert to female precedents. Her Verses on Mrs Rowe recall...
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....