Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Sappho
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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 novel's three apparently unconnected characters are breast surgeon Handel (erstwhile boy chorister, castrato, and Catholic priest; not the same as yet reminiscent of George Frederick Handel
), Picasso (a young woman whose family opposes...
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L. E. L.
LEL's poetic persona in her title poem is deeply indebted to Germaine de Staël
's highly influential Corinne (1807), which depicts the contemporary woman artist as a spontaneous performer of verse to her own musical...
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Natalie Clifford Barney
In L'amour défenduNCB
defends the proposition that only love is important, not the sex to whom it is directed.
Barney, Natalie Clifford, and Karla Jay. A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney. Translator Anna Livia, New Victoria Publishers.
85
She argues that every person possesses both masculine and feminine principles: We should not...
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L. E. L.
However, LEL's version of the narratives of her female precursors presents a complex layering of voices framed by that of her Florentine improvisatrice. Even though the speaker has poured [her] full and burning heart /...
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Ann Yearsley
In the added lines AY
modifies her original opinion that true friendship is impossible if the friends are not equals in rank. In the last of these poems (a complex discussion of the issue of...
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Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
EOB
writes in terms of a women's tradition: for instance, she praises Barbauld
for praising Elizabeth Rowe
. She makes confident judgements and attributions (she is sure that Lady Pakington
is the real author of...
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Elizabeth Elstob
EE
's first publication consists of a fairly short essay with some poems to fill out the volume. She celebrates Scudéry as a Sappho
(one of Scudéry's strong female characters is Sapho) and as...
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Lady Margaret Sackville
She set most of her early poems in exotic places. More than one critic has heard the influence of Sappho
in what are sometimes called LMS
's Hellenic verses. In A Hymn to Dionysus...
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Elizabeth Fenton
Fenton sets out to paint a a familiar picture of the everyday occurrences, manners, and habits of life of persons undistinguished either by wealth or fame
Fenton, Elizabeth. The Journal of Mrs. Fenton. Editor Lawrence, Sir Henry, Edward Arnold.
1-2
in British India. But this is largely unfulfilled...
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Marie Belloc Lowndes
In her reviewing capacity she was able to comment on several texts central to the European tradition of women's writing. She called Marie de Lafayette
's La Princesse de Cleves (re-issued as part of an...
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Angela Brazil
Girls in these books sew, roll bandages, dig for victory, arrange care for the children of munitions workers, and raise money in support of the war effort. For the School Colours is also notable for...
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Judith Cowper Madan
The poem in its later version, headed with a quotation from Virgil
, opens: Unequal, how shall I the search begin, / Or paint with artless hand the awful scene?
Concanen, Matthew, editor. The Flower-Piece. Walthoe.
There is a strong flavour of Kafka
about this comic parable both of a family and of a state. The royal family of Evarchia (somewhere in contemporary Middle or Eastern Europe) has an authoritarian father...
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Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
An epilogue by Thomas Moore
sounds flippantly critical of Bluestockings (not the historical group of this name, but in the more general sense of intellectual women). A speaker appears wondering much what little knavish sprite...
