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.
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