Introduction

Introduction The Ladies, I should tell you, have been dealing largely and profitably at the shop of the Muses. And the Hon. Mrs. Norton ... has been proving that she has some of the true ink in her veins, and has taken down several big boys in Mr. Colburn's Great Burlington School. Mrs. Hemans, too, has been kindly noticed by Mr. Murray, and has accomplished the difficult feat of a second edition. Apollo is beginning to discharge his retinue of sprawling men-servants, and to have handmaids about his immortal person, to dust his rays and polish his bow and fire-irons. If the great He- Creatures intend to get into place again, they must take Mrs. Bramble's advice, and "have an eye to the maids." -John Hamilton Reynolds (1832) Although their influence and even their existence has been largely unac knowledged by literary scholars and critics throughout most of the twentieth century, women poets were, as their contemporary John Hamilton Reynolds nervously acknowledged, a force to be reckoned with in early-nineteenth century Britain.1 Not only Felicia Hemans and Caroline Norton but Letitia Elizabeth Landon and Mary Howitt were major players and serious competi tors in the literary marketplace of Reynolds's time. Their poetry was reviewed in the most prestigious journals, respected by discerning readers, reprinted, imitated, anthologized, sung, memorized for recitation, copied into com monplace books, and bought by the public. Before their time, prominent writers such as Joanna Baillie, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Hannah More, Mary Robinson, Anna Seward, Charlotte Smith, Mary Tighe, and others helped to change the landscape of British poetry both in style and in subject matter. They were active participants in, and sometimes instigators of, important literary debates of the age. There were, of course, many women poets whose books made no splash at all, but that was true of great numbers of volumes by aspiring male poets I. See "Letters of Edward Herbert, New Series. No. r;• Athenaeum, 7 January 1832, 6, re printed in Selected Prose of john Hamilton Reynolds, ed. Leonidas M. Jones (Cambridge, Mass. , 1966), 422. xxv XXVl Introduction as well. And certainly women who attempted poetry could be patronized, handicapped by their lack of formal education, constrained by needlework, child care, and other household responsibilities, and limited by their socio economic status. But despite these difficulties and more, a surprising number of women succeeded in becoming an integral and enduring part of the liter ary scene. Poetry pervaded everyday life then in a way we can barely begin to com prehend today. It was a major form of expression and entertainment for literate people. Newspapers and periodicals featured it prominently. Friends exchanged poetic gifts, sometimes composed "impromptu" for albums, and sent verse in lieu of thank-you notes and to commemorate births, deaths, and marriages within families. In social circles, poetry was the source of heated discussion, parlor games, and evening readings by the fireside. This volume reflects not only the prevalence of poetry during the time but also gives a sampling of the varieties of women's poetic enterprises and the many ways in which women participated in this, the most prolific age of verse production. To this end, it chronicles the more obscure, such as Christian Milne, along with the more prominent, such as Charlotte Smith, including works by women in all economic and social strata, from the alehouse keeper Isabel Pagan and the domestic servant Janet Little to the socialite Lady Caro line Lamb. Some of the poets in this volume, such as Ann Radcliffe, Agnes Strickland, and Helen Maria Williams, are generally associated with other genres; however, their poems were well known to their contemporaries. The strictures of social class, which associated commercial book publi cation with "being in trade," and the cultural emphasis on female modesty meant that many women who wrote poetry never published or, if they did, were careful to dissociate their names from their works. Yet modern readers forget that in those days poetry sometimes circulated widely in manuscript form; for example, Susanna Blamire's verse became well known through oral transmission and through other unpublished sources. Though it was taught in school, her verse was not printed until 1842, two generations after the poet's death. Writers such as Jane Austen, Lady Byron, Maria Edgeworth, and Dorothy Wordsworth wrote poetry solely for family and close friends. Maria Abdy, Elizabeth Cobbold, and Mary Tighe published only in small private editions. Certain aristocratic women, such as Lady Anne Lindsay and Carolina, Bar oness Nairne, took extreme measures to retain their anonymity and refused to acknowledge their authorship of much admired poems even when pressed to do so by those who had guessed the truth. In both cases, their names were not published with their work until half a century after it first became Introduction XXVll popular. At the other end of the socioeconomic scale, some poetry came be fore the public as the result of an act of charity; such was the case with Ann Candler, whose book was produced by subscription with her name appended to aid the solicitation. Even some of the most commercially successful books of poetry, for example, those by Felicia Hemans, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Mary Robinson, and Charlotte Smith, were motivated by the poets' serious economic need. But it is not just financial status that separates the poets whose work is contained in this volume. Although they all wrote between the years 1770 and 1840, they wrote in such diverse styles, about such varied experiences and subject matter, expressing such divergent political opinions, that in some cases they have little more in common than their gender. Some were friends who gave one another emotional support. Maria Edgeworth, for example, consoled Anna Letitia Barbauld when Eighteen Hundred and Eleven was at tacked by the Quarterly Review. But others were bitter rivals and even enemies. Anna Seward rarely lost an opportunity to disparage Charlotte Smith, and after a quarrel Hannah More turned on the former object of her patronage and conducted a letter-writing campaign against Ann Yearsley. Some, such as Hannah More and Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna, were conservatives, while others, for instance, Mary Robinson and Helen Maria Williams, were liberals. Mary Hays openly espoused feminist principles; Jane West was outspokenly anti-feminist. Some, such as Elizabeth Cobbold, were married with many children, while others, such as Joanna Baillie, remained contentedly single all their life. Some, such as Letitia Elizabeth Landon, aspired to literary repu tation, whereas others, such as Maria Logan, seemed indifferent to public acclaim. Emma Roberts and Anna Maria Jones traveled the world; Jane Tay lor and Ann Batten Cristal! appear never to have ventured far from their small, circumscribed spaces. Still, however they may have differed, evidence suggests that they read one another's poetry. The works of the sixty-two poets contained in this volume are presented within the context of their lives, careers, and critical reputations. Certain biographical patterns provide clues about how, within a society that dis couraged women's participation in literary culture in subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways, women established themselves as respected poets in Lon don, Edinburgh, or the provinces-a few becoming professional writers and earning a reasonable living. Nearly all women poets came from dissenting households, a religious environment more likely to give them permission to develop and to exercise their talents. Most of them had an educated parent who taught them to read, gave them access to books, and encouraged their writing. Biographical accounts of their childhoods reveal a predictable uni- xxvm Introduction formity-as youngsters they tended to be precocious; they showed an early interest in, and talent for, making verses; they read voraciously; they begged to be allowed to learn more than was customary for girls, and they were often accommodated. A significant number turned to writing professionally only as an economic expedient in a time of financial crisis, using their talent to sup port their families; Felicia Hemans, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Mary Russell Mitford, Charlotte Smith, and Ann Yearsley fit this mold. As adults, the most successful found a mentor to guide their continued intellectual development and to introduce them to people who could advance their ambitions. Many were savvy in exploiting family connections or other relationships to gain access to publication. None, of course, not even the most socially advantaged, had a university education, and many were essentially self-taught. But in certain ways what they felt to be a grave handicap, the lack of a classical education, may have contributed to their originality: since they were not trained in the conven tional manner, their work could be more innovative. Contemporary critics often notice their talent or "genius" while deploring the "incorrectness" of their verse. It is useful to look at women poets together, apart from their male con temporaries, not because of any common ideology (for which one will search in vain) but because their varied perspectives on the world were all shaped by a personal struggle with patriarchal constraints. All of them constructed a poetic self within an environment where artistic expectations were highly gendered. It is revealing to examine their diverse strategies for coming to terms with the tension between their society's concepts of being a writer and a woman, an artist and a daughter, a poet and a mother or a wife. To group them together for reading or study does not mean that we subscribe to the confining essentialist notions of female authorship current during their own era (with which many of them concurred and which many at times even exploited).

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