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 Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Textual Features	Alethea Lewis	AL dedicated this work to Lady B., possibly the mother of the addressee. Her preface To the Gentlemen Reviewers of British Literature goes over the reception of The Microcosm, and mentions her Vicissitudes...
Textual Features	Susanna Watts	Ephemera of all kinds have been bound in: family anecdotes, a letter of William Cowper of 1788, a Hindu Primer (or alphabet), a railway ticket of 1839, women's parliamentary petitions against slavery of 1833 (one...
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, Pennington, Sarah, Lady. An Unfortunate Mother’s Advice to her Absent Daughters. W. Bristow and C. Ethrington, 1761. 38 and offers...
Textual Features	Janet Little	She consistently takes a challenging stance in face of authority. Ironically (in view of Johnson's championing of women writers and Burns's snobbish attitude about herself) she uses Samuel Johnson as a symbol of the tyrant-critic...
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...
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, 1940. 354 and n10
Textual Production	Penelope Aubin	PA 's latest novel, The Life of Charlotta Du Pont. An English Lady; Taken from her own Memoirs, was advertised with her name; it was dedicated to a Mrs Rowe. The novel is available...
Textual Production	Frances Seymour Countess of Hertford	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, qtd. in Hughes, Helen Sard. The Gentle Hertford, Her Life and Letters. Macmillan, 1940. 7 and twelve when her...
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	Jane Brereton	Bibliographer David Foxon assigns this poem to Elizabeth Singer Rowe , whose name was written on to the title-page by a contemporary reader of a copy now at the University of Illinois , Urbana...
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	Susanna Watts	SW worked hard for three months at translating Tasso 's Jerusalem and Verri 's Roman Nights; she had already done some translation from Tasso in about 1786. Elizabeth Singer Rowe , too, had translated from Tasso's Jerusalem. Watts, Susanna. Scrapbook. 11 Feb. 1834. 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, 1990. Aucott, Shirley. Susanna Watts (1768 to 1842): author of Leicester’s first guide, abolitionist and bluestocking. Shirley Aucott, 2004. 12
Theme or Topic Treated in Text	Mary Masters	A few of the letters discuss female friendship and feminist opinion, as if seeking to raise the consciousness of the recipient. Some in this category occur at random among other letters. Most treat topics of...
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...

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