Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Sappho
-
Standard Name: Sappho
Birth Name: Sappho
Used Form: Sapho
Sappho
, the female poet who stands at the head of the lyric tradition in Europe, has been a major figure of identification, of desire, of influence, of adulation, and of opprobrium in British women's writing, though little remains of her texts. All of her estimated 12,000 lines of verse has been lost except a handful of complete poems and many fragments, either quotations of her work by other writers, or scraps deciphered from papyri used to wrap mummies in ancient Egypt. This mutilated body of work amounts to somewhere around seven hundred intelligible lines.
The American Sarah Lewis
published her play Sappho
, A Tragedy in Five Acts (which was reviewed in England and France, as well as the United States).
At least two sources, American Women...
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Edith Sitwell
ES
loved Christina Rossetti
from her childhood, and later thoroughly admired Gertrude Stein
. As a young woman, however, she believed: Women's poetry, with the exception of Sappho
. . . and Goblin MarketChristina Rossetti
and...
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Alexander Pope
His early translation Sapho
to Phaon—which, like Ovid
's original, represents the woman poet as despairingly in love with a man who has rejected her—appeared in print in 1712 in the eighth edition of...
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Stevie Smith
Someone suggested that SS
should translate Sappho
, but she responded that I can't make head nor tail of that ancient girl.
Smith, Stevie. Me Again. Editors Barbera, Jack and William McBrien, Vintage.
The future AD
issued a translation unconnected with the Delphin project and through a different publisher: Les Poésies d'Anacréon
et de Sapho
, traduites de grec en français.
Grosperrin, Jean-Philippe, and Christine Dousset-Seiden, editors. “Les époux Dacier: une bibliographie”. Littératures classiques: les époux Dacier, Honoré Champion, pp. 259-86.
262
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Jane Porter
In 1800 appeared a pamphlet essay which may be by JP
or to her and her sister
: A Defence of the Profession of an Actor.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Stuart Bennett Rare Books & Manuscripts: A Catalogue of Books By, For, and About Women of the British Isles, 1696-1892. Stuart Bennett Rare Books & Manuscripts.
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and Thomas McLean
Prins, Yopie. Victorian Sappho. Princeton University Press.
93
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
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Mary Catherine Hume
MCH
's Sappho
, A Poem, criticises male supremacy and celebrates the capacities of women.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
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Anne Bradstreet
His long, descriptive title begins: The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung up in America; or, Severall Poems, Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning, Full of Delight, before going to enumerate the major poems...
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Mary Bailey
She was mistaken in believing this to be a first: several translations had appeared, often together with the surviving poems of Sappho
and occasionally with other poets as well, as in the version by Thomas Stanley
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Clara Reeve
Over the signature C. R., she asserted that women writing were a sign of the rapid progress of the present age towards the refinements of civilization.
The Lady’s Magazine. J. Wheble.
8 (1777): 538
Instead of the single Sappho
Textual Features
Rosamund Marriott Watson
Her introduction demonstrates a good knowledge of ancient Greek poetry and its publication history. In addition to selections by Plato
and Theocritus
, the book includes single poems by Sappho
and Erinna
.
Watson, Rosamund Marriott, editor. Selections from the Greek Anthology. W. Scott.
The Woman-Hater again features Lady Smatter. This time she drops nearly five times as many authors' names as in The Witlings; only one, Sappho
, is that of a woman.
Textual Features
Mary Robinson
MR
's preface quotes that of Charlotte Smith
to her Elegiac Sonnets.
Robinson, Mary. “Introduction”. Mary Robinson: Selected Poems, edited by Judith Pascoe, Broadview, pp. 19-64.
45
She presents her own work as one of scholarship, explaining that by legitimate in her title she means the sonnet in...
