Eighteenth-century women poets and their poetry: inventing agency, inventing genre

545 Pages·1.463 MB·English

by  American Council of Learned Societies., Backscheider, Paula R

Eighteenth-Century Women Poets
and Their Poetry
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Eighteenth-Century
Women Poets and Their Poetry
Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre
Paula R. Backscheider
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
∫ 2005 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2005
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
Johns Hopkins Paperback edition, 2008
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363
www.press.jhu.edu
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition of this book
as follows:
Backscheider, Paula R.
Eighteenth-century women poets and their poetry : inventing
agency, inventing genre / Paula R. Backscheider.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-8018-8169-2 (alk. paper)
1. English poetry—18th century—History and criticism. 2. Women
and literature—Great Britain—History—19th century. 3. English
poetry—Women authors—History and criticism. 4. Authorship—Sex
differences—History—18th century. 5. Invention (Rhetoric)—
History—18th century. 6. Literary form—History—18th century.
I. Title.
PR555.W6B33 2005
821%.5099287—dc22
2004027038
isbn 13: 978-0-8018-8746-8
isbn 10: 0-8018-8746-1
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
To
my daughter, Andrea, and
my women friends and colleagues
who wouldn’t let me walk away from this book
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Plan of the Book xiii
Approaching the Poetry xix
The Chapters xxii
1 Introduction 1
Changing Contexts 2
Systems, Gender, and Persistent Issues 14
Agency and the ‘‘Marked Marker’’ 22
2 Anne Finch and What Women Wrote 28
The Social and the Formal 29
Anne Finch and Popular Poetry 39
Poetry on Poetry 58
The Spleen as Legacy 72
3 Women and Poetry in the Public Eye 80
Poetry as News and Critique 84
The Woman Question 99
Elizabeth Singer Rowe 113
4 Hymns, Narratives, and Innovations in Religious Poetry 123
The Voice of Paraphrase 126
The Hymn as Personal Lyric 137
Religious Poetry as Subversive Narrative 152
Devout Soliloquies 168
viii Contents
5 Friendship Poems 175
The Legacy of Katherine Philips 177
Encouragement and the Counteruniverse 193
Jane Brereton 217
Adaptation and Ideology 223
6 Retirement Poetry 233
Beyond Convention 234
Memory, Time, and Elizabeth Carter 241
Reflection and Difference 257
7 The Elegy 268
What Did Women Write? 271
Representative Composers: Darwall and Seward 286
The Elegy and Same-Sex Desire 296
Entertainment and Forgetting 312
8 The Sonnet, Charlotte Smith, and What Women Wrote 316
The Sonnet and the Political 317
Sonnet Sequences 325
Women Poets and the Spread of the Sonnet 338
The Emigrants, Conversations, and Beachy Head 351
Smith as Transitional Poet 366
9 Conclusion 376
Biographies of the Poets 403
Notes 413
Bibliography 467
Index 499
Acknowledgments
How long this book has taken to research and write can be measured in the
wonderful student assistants who have worked on it with me. Kim Snyder was the
first, and she left a legacy of research notebooks and finding aids that never failed
us. Melissa Roth became an expert on several poets, and her insights and lively
advocacy for them improved the book. Jessica Smith Ellis, Jessie Jordan, Eliz-
abeth Cater Childs, and Lynn Moody did super sleuthing. Heather Hicks and
Sara Brown shared the drudgery for submission with the endless polishing of
notes and bibliography, and Heather and Lacey Williams cheerfully survived all
the way through page proofs. Day by day, these women were the smooth wheels
that kept the work going, and they added humor and new learning experiences.
I am especially grateful to Martine Watson Brownley, Penny Ingram, and
Devoney Looser, who read portions of the book and made many helpful sugges-
tions. Tina even offered riverboat and late-night consultations. When my com-
mitment to the book’s largest purposes wavered, they, together with Hilary Wyss,
Alicia Carroll, Joy Leighton, and members of my former NEH seminars, espe-
cially Anna Battigelli, Catherine Ingrassia, Kathryn King, and Paula McDowell,
encouraged me to continue. Stuart Curran allowed me to use his copy of Char-
lotte Smith’s Conversations for an extended time, Miller Solomon shared his en-
tire Robert Dodsley collection, and Dave Haney, Tim Dykstal, and Jim Ham-
mersmith were patient, on-site reference sources. Nancy Noe truly made the
Auburn University library work for me; perhaps no library in the world would
have completely supported this project, and Nancy worked tirelessly and imag-
inatively to give me access to whatever eighteenth- and twenty-first-century
items I needed. Susan Gubar by a chance remark she has probably forgotten
played an important part in my decision to write this book: she reminded me how
often in my career I have reconsidered and tested paradigms and how much
pleasure and intellectual stimulation this has brought me. The anonymous Johns
Hopkins University Press reader, who provided thoughtful reflections on organi-
zation and meticulous attention to detail, and the copyeditor, Joanne Allen, went