James Macpherson

Choice of women writers is fairly generous, with excerpts from Hester Mulso Chapone , John Aikin and Anna Letitia Barbauld (Evenings at Home), Susanna Haswell Rowson , Elizabeth Carter , Hester Thrale ,...

Among undated poems Bowdler prints another imitation of Ossian and a translation from the German of Friedrich von Matthisson . In 1803 ES translated a poem by Gessner in response to William Sotheby

At three years old ES loved books and at four she could read extremely well. The move to Suffolk brought the Smiths a governess who was only sixteen but whose abilities exceeded her...

One month before writing this poem Elizabeth Smith met Mary Hunt , with whom she was soon maintaining a scholarly correspondence. In the earliest letter which Bowdler prints (written on 7 July 1792), Smith touches...

That is, she took Ossian as a model for a lament for her own chosen ancient hero. The din of war is drowned by one more great and more terrific sound; / A sound high...

Elizabeth Smith's surviving letters are all written to female friends. The earliest ones are precociously concerned with exercising her learning: not precisely showing off but defining her own personality through her passion for Ossian and...

Though AS disliked Samuel Johnson, many of her literary opinions were conservative. She still loved Ossian in 1796, when the texts were known to be forgeries. On 24 August 1807 (despite her admiration for Robert Southey

This novel claims relationship with Macpherson 's Ossian through quotations appearing on its title-page and heading its chapters. An element of terror derives from Matthew Gregory Lewis 's notorious The Monk, 1796. It opens...

The novel opens: One tempestuous night in the October of 1793, a carriage stopped at the door of a solitary old house on the borders of the Lake of Killarney. Felix Charlemont...

The poem picked out by the Critical Review as the principal one, occupying fourteen pages, is entitled Lines found on the Stairs of the Tour de la Chapelle of the Bastile. These lines, powerful...

The title-page of this very rare book goes on: To which is added, a Description of part of the Main Land of Scotland, and of the Isles of Mull, Ulva, Staffa, I-Columbkill...

The title-page quotes Dryden . The story opens in Scotland, twenty miles from Glasgow, with the humble clergyman Dr Woodville giving reluctant permission for his unsophisticated young daughter, Anna, to attend a charity ball...

EH 's next novel, the St Clair of the Isles; or, The Outlaws of Barra. A Scottish Tradition, published anonymously but claimed on later title-pages, reveals considerable knowledge of Ossian and of medieval customs.

This novel is well supplied with quotations: Macpherson 's Ossian on the title-page and Robert Blair (The Grave) to open the first volume, with Shakespeare and Milton for the succeeding volumes. It opens...

Letters from the Mountains was not noticed in the Edinburgh Review, an omission which Grant attributed to gender prejudice. The Critical gave it a brutal review, which began by turning seriously against the...