Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Mary Barber
-
Standard Name: Barber, Mary
Birth Name: Mary
Married Name: Mary Barber
Pseudonym: Sapphira
Pseudonym: M. B.
MB
is a domestic, small-scale, early eighteenth-century poet of charm and intelligence (remembered particularly for her writing about her children), but also an incisive, often satirical commentator on social and gender issues. Her single collection of poems was preceded by a number of separately-published pieces, mostly anonymous, not all specifically mentioned here.
MC
shared her husband's network of high-level connections in circles of Jacobites
and Jacobite sympathisers. She was a friend of the writers Pope
, Prior
, Swift
, and Mary Barber
, and of the...
politics
Mary Caesar
She acted on her Jacobite principles in attending parliamentary debates, reading the memoirs of statesmen, and visiting Tory detainees in prison. Indeed, though she never questioned that men were intended to manage public affairs, she...
Textual Production
Mary Caesar
MC
told Mary Barber
that she would have liked to write the history of her own times (no doubt, says Rumbold, in opposition to the publication of that title by the Whig Gilbert Burnet
).
Rumbold, Valerie. “The Jacobite vision of Mary Caesar”. Women, Writing, History, 1640-1740, edited by Isobel Grundy and Susan Wiseman, Batsford, pp. 178-98.
196
Friends, Associates
Mary Chandler
MC
seems to have become the real friend of several women of higher rank than herself, some of whom moved from the position of her customers to that of her patrons: they included Lady Hertford
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Mary Chandler
Many of MC
's poems are occasional. She writes of female friendship (preferable to marriage, she says), of gardens (her own and those of other people), and praises lines by Mary Barber
.
Intertextuality and Influence
Jane Collier
The commonplace-book throws light on Collier's other extant writings as well. A casual mention of what Sally calls the Turba proves definitively that at least one neologism in The Cry stemmed not from her but...
Textual Features
Dorothea Du Bois
After seven pages on grammar, she offers pattern letters: those in verse are in effect an anthology of epistolary poems by women, a patriotically generous selection of Irish writers (Mary Monck
, Mary Barber
Textual Production
Constantia Grierson
Mary Barber
gave this date to CG
's congratulatory verses To Mrs. Barber, under the Name of Sapphira, when she placed them at the head of her printed volume in [1735].
Barber, Mary et al. Poems on Several Occasions. C. Rivington.
xlv-xlviii
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
5 (August 1735): 492
Publishing
Constantia Grierson
The Gentleman's Magazine reprinted (two or three years after CG
's death) her To Mrs. Mary Barber, which had just appeared in Barber's Poems on Several Occasions.
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
5 (August 1735): 492
Education
Constantia Grierson
Constantia Crawley (later CG
) became (through her own efforts, said Mary Barber
) proficient in Latin, Greek, history, theology, philosophy and mathematics. Laetitia Pilkington
says she also knew Hebrew (which Mary Delany
doubted), and...
Friends, Associates
Constantia Grierson
CG
was a friend from their adolescence of the young women who became the poets Mary Barber
and Laetitia Pilkington
. Their shared friendship with Jonathan Swift
has been an element in preserving some memory...
Textual Production
Constantia Grierson
Mary Barber
and George Ballard
mention an abridged (that is, short or elementary) history of England by CG
; it is not known to have reached print. Literary historian A. C. Elias notes that as...
Textual Production
Constantia Grierson
CG
's earliest poems were written to Laetitia Pilkington
before either of them were married; compliments to Barber
came later.
Elias, A. C. “A Manuscript of Constantia Grierson’s”. Swift Studies, Vol.
2
, pp. 33-56.
33n3
Lavoie, Chantel Michelle. Poems by Eminent Ladies: A Study of an Eighteenth-Century Anthology. University of Toronto.
217, 219
Literary responses
Constantia Grierson
Mary Barber
responded to the feeling expressed in this poem with a somewhat clumsy poetic attempt at comfort.
Barber, Mary et al. Poems on Several Occasions. C. Rivington.
38-40
Textual Features
Martha Hale
The poems, though not mostly ambitious in mode, display remarkable skill and versatility for an amateur. MH
addresses domestic themes (in love-poetry and family verse) with wit, ingenuity, and an unusual focus on the female...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Barber, Mary et al. Poems on Several Occasions. C. Rivington, 1734.