It is not true that Corsica was unique as an overtly political poem by a woman (precedents reach from the seventeenth century to Verses on the Present State of Ireland by Margaret Bingham, Countess Lucan
Textual Features
Elizabeth Bentley
The poems appear in chronological order, written over the years since 1785, with a bumper year in 1789. EB
writes in various modes, using on the whole conventional and old-fashioned style and sentiment in each...
Intertextuality and Influence
Frances Browne
FB
began writing at the age of seven, when, inspired by her great and strange love of poetry, she attempted to re-write The Lord's Prayer in verse.
Browne, Frances. The Star of Attéghéi; the Vision of Schwartz; and Other Poems. Edward Moxon.
xvi-xvii
She continued to write throughout her childhood...
Textual Production
Lady Eleanor Butler
LEB
kept the first of her journals to survive, prefaced with lines adapted from Thomas Gray
's Elegy in a Country Churchyard about the short and simple annals of the poor.
Butler, Lady Eleanor et al. The Hamwood Papers of the Ladies of Llangollen and Caroline Hamilton. Editor Bell, Eva Mary, Macmillan.
54
Mavor, Elizabeth. The Ladies of Llangollen. Michael Joseph.
68
Butler, Lady Eleanor et al. “Foreword and Editorial Materials”. The Hamwood Papers of the Ladies of Llangollen and Caroline Hamilton, edited by Eva Mary Bell, Macmillan, p. vii - viii; various pages.
45, 371
Textual Features
Frances Cornford
In this collection Cambridge again functions as an important subject. Frances Cornford saw her Cambridge poems as emblematic of her poetry as a whole. They served as a gauge for her poetic development and also...
Literary responses
Mary Whateley Darwall
John Wesley
noted that he thought some of the elegies of MWDquite equal to Mr. Gray
's.
Messenger, Ann. Woman and Poet in the Eighteenth Century: The Life of Mary Whateley Darwall (1738-1825). AMS Press.
93
Textual Features
Harriet Downing
The poem begins by confronting those surly cynics who say women are incapable of true friendship.
Downing, Harriet. Mary; or, Female Friendship. James Harper.
1
She allows that Woman is confined to a narrow sphere, her virtues hidden from the public gaze...
Intertextuality and Influence
Catherine Fanshawe
The poems by CF
include an Elegy on the Abrogation of the Birthnight Ball (her lament, in the person of an elderly beau, for the passing of the old-fashioned minuet: an orgy of grandiose parody...
Textual Features
Catherine Fanshawe
One of the poems, a delightful Ode which imitates or parodies several well-known passages in various works by Gray
, was written not by CF
but by her friend Mary Berry
, some time before...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anne Francis
AF
writes in the style of mid-century poets Gray
and especially Collins
, whose names she specifically invokes and whose words she echoes, along with classics of the past like Petrarch
. She records an...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Gilding
Edward Pitcher
describes these poems, the last identified from her pen, printed and apparently written soon after childbirth, as gloomy in tone.
Pitcher, Edward W. Woman’s Wit. Edwin Mellen Press.
311
The Desire seems to embrace, for a woman, the kind of obscurity...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anne Grant
As well as her central allusion to Barbauld, AG
claims authority for her work by quoting Milton
on her title-page and later as well, and by echoing, in her deliberately derivative, that is traditional style...
This time the title comes from Thomas Gray
. Sir Leslie Stephen
was responsible for the acceptance of this novel, which is remarkable for its independent-minded, property-owning heroine.
Timeline
30 May 1747: Thomas Gray published Ode on a Distant Prospect...
Writing climate item
30 May 1747
Thomas Gray
published Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.
18 March 1748: Robert Dodsley first offered for sale his...
Writing climate item
18 March 1748
Robert Dodsley
first offered for sale his influential Collection of Poems by Several Hands.
15 February 1751: Thomas Gray published his Elegy Written in...
Writing climate item
15 February 1751
Thomas Gray
published his Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard, to forestall unauthorized publication.
By June 1753: Thomas Gray's Poems were published by Dodsley,...
Writing climate item
By June 1753
Thomas Gray
's Poems were published by Dodsley
, with designs by Richard Bentley
the younger.
8 August 1757: Thomas Gray published his Two Odes (the Pindarics...
Writing climate item
8 August 1757
Thomas Gray
published his Two Odes (the Pindarics The Bard and The Progress of Poesy).
15 January 1759: The British Museum (including what had formerly...
Building item
15 January 1759
The British Museum
(including what had formerly been known as the King's Library
), established six years earlier, was first opened to the public.
22 September 1761: King George III and Queen Charlotte were...
1775: The first, posthumous, printing of Thomas...
Writing climate item
1775
The first, posthumous, printing of Thomas Gray
's sonnet on the death of Richard West
caused a literary sensation; it laid the foundation for Charlotte Smith
's Elegiac Sonnets, 1784, and the revival of the sonnet form.
Texts
Gray, Thomas, and Herbert Willmarth Starr. Correspondence. Editors Toynbee, Paget and Leonard Whibley, Clarendon Press, 1971.
Gray, Thomas, and Herbert Willmarth Starr. Correspondence. Editors Toynbee, Paget and Leonard Whibley, Clarendon Press, 1971.
Gray, Thomas, and William Collins. “Introduction”. Thomas Gray and William Collins: Poetical Works, edited by Roger Lonsdale, Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 9-13.
Gray, Thomas, and William Collins. “Introduction”. Thomas Gray and William Collins: Poetical Works, edited by Roger Lonsdale, Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 9-13.
Gray, Thomas, and William Collins. “Introductions”. Selected Poems of Thomas Gray and William Collins, edited by Arthur Johnson, Edward Arnold, 1967, pp. 9 - 14, 121.
Matthisson, Frederick, and Thomas Gray. Letters Written from Various Parts of the Continent. Translator Plumptre, Anne, T.N. Longman and O. Rees, 1799.
Gray, Thomas, and William Collins. Thomas Gray and William Collins: Poetical Works. Editor Lonsdale, Roger, Oxford University Press, 1977.