James Macpherson

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

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...

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

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 ,...