Jane Brereton

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Standard Name: Brereton, Jane
Birth Name: Jane Hughes
Married Name: Jane Brereton
Pseudonym: A Lady
Pseudonym: Melissa
Pseudonym: M—a
JB was a poet who began writing in Wales before her marriage in 1711 and remained productive until her death thirty years later. She discusses poetry, too, in personal letters.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Carter
EC associated on terms of warmth and equality with men of letters or culture such as Samuel Johnson , Samuel Richardson , Thomas Birch , Moses Browne , Richard Savage , William and John Duncombe
Literary responses Fidelia
By now dialogue and debate was gathering round Fidelia. In April 1735 the Gentleman's Magazine printed a doggerell address to her by M[eliss]a, that is the Welsh poet Jane Brereton . Brereton prophesies Fidelia's...
Literary responses Fidelia
Next month commentators were busy. Jane Brereton as Melissa addressed both Elizabeth Carter (whom, in her turn, she supposed to be an anonymous male writer) and Fido, whom she assured that Fidelia ought to...
Literary responses Fidelia
Although Gentleman's Magazine poets in general have attracted attention from Anthony Barker , and Jane Brereton has received overdue critical notice from Sarah Prescott , Fidelia's lack of a historical identity seems to have militated...
Publishing Fidelia
The Gentleman's Magazine printed a poem to Fidelia by Fido (that is, Thomas Beach), a poem to Melissa (Jane Brereton ) by Elizabeth Carter , and also Fidelia to Melissa.
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
5 (1735): 255
Barker, Anthony. “Poetry from the Provinces: Amateur Poets in the Gentleman’s Magazine in the 1730s and 1740s”. Tradition in Transition: Women Writers, Marginal Texts, and the Eighteenth-Century Canon, edited by Alvaro Ribeiro and James G. Basker, Clarendon, 1996, pp. 241-56.
254
Reception Fidelia
Over the next couple of months came further poems by Elizabeth Carter ,
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
5 (1735): 379
Melissa (who says Fidelia outgoes her in both spleen and brain), by Fido,
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
5 (1735) 382
the...
Textual Features Fidelia
In the former she defends and praises Fido (Thomas Beach) and Elizabeth Carter . In the latter she summons her customary wit and dash in the service of a new joke, which (like...
Textual Production Elizabeth Carter
The work she translated was Algarotti 's Italian version of Newton 's Optics. The project of translating back from the Italian popularisation of this famous work was recommended to her by Thomas Birch ....
Textual Production Elizabeth Singer Rowe
An Expostulatory Epistle to Sir Richard Steele upon the Death of Mr. Addison, published in February 1720 by a Lady, is attributed to ESR in a contemporary note on the title-page of a...

Timeline

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Texts

Brereton, Jane. An Expostulatory Epistle to Sir Richard Steele upon the Death of Mr. Addison. W. Hinchliffe, 1720.
Brereton, Jane. Merlin. Cave, 1735.
Brereton, Jane. Poems on Several Occasions. Edward Cave, 1744.
Brereton, Jane. The Fifth Ode of the Fourth Book of Horace Imitated. W. Hinchliffe, 1716.