Promotional Information

An ambitious and pioneering work of archeological excavation, one that will establish a foundation for the future study of eighteenth-century women poets and their poetry. A major contribution. -- Charles Haskell Hinnant, University of Missouri-Columbia

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Plan of the Book
Approaching the Poetry
The Chapters
1. Introduction
Changing Contexts
Systems, Gender, and Persistent Issues
Agency and the ''Marked Marker''
2. Anne Finch and What Women Wrote
The Social and the Formal
Anne Finch and Popular Poetry
Poetry on Poetry
The Spleen as Legacy
3. Women and Poetry in the Public Eye
Poetry as News and Critique
The Woman Question
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
4. Hymns, Narratives, and Innovations in Religious Poetry
The Voice of Paraphrase
The Hymn as Personal Lyric
Religious Poetry as Subversive Narrative
Devout Soliloquies
5. Friendship Poems
The Legacy of Katherine Philips
Encouragement and the Counteruniverse
Jane Brereton
Adaptation and Ideology
6. Retirement Poetry
Beyond Convention
Memory, Time, and Elizabeth Carter
Reflection and Difference
7. The Elegy
What Did Women Write?
Representative Composers: Darwall and Seward
The Elegy and Same-Sex Desire
Entertainment and Forgetting
8. The Sonnet, Charlotte Smith, and What Women Wrote
The Sonnet and the Political
Sonnet Sequences
Women Poets and the Spread of the Sonnet
The Emigrants, Conversations, and Beachy Head
Smith as Transitional Poet
9. Conclusion
Biographies of the Poets
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Paula R. Backscheider is the Philpott-Stevens Eminent Scholar in the Department of English at Auburn University. She is the author of several books, including Daniel Defoe: His Life, Spectacular Politics: Theatrical Power and Mass Culture in Early Modern England, and Reflections on Biography, and editor of Revising Women: Eighteenth-Century "Women's Fiction" and Social Engagement.

Reviews

Backscheider... writes with an ease and clarity that make this book fully accessible. Choice Passionate and wide-ranging study. -- Helen Deutsch London Review of Books Wise and preeminently useful... A courageous book. -- Ellen Moody Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer Our sense of eighteenth-century poetic territory is immeasurably expanded by the new work of Backscheider... Besides an excellent historical and cultural introduction on the landscape of poetry production in the eighteenth century,... each chapter offers fine-grained close readings of often fully quoted poems (many of which are still not readily available in print) along with biographical and formal contexts. -- Cynthia Wall Studies in English Literature For specialists of eighteenth-century literature in English, this is a must-read book. -- Betty A. Schellenberg Eighteenth-Century Studies This book paves the way for further work and is itself a valuable contribution to exciting nascent debates. -- Louise Marshall Modern Language Review Brilliantly introduces issues, opportunities, and new directions, that open up vistas into a vital world of complex personalities, engaging social practices, and inspiring artistic achievements. -- Elizabeth Kraft Scriblerian One of the best and most significant books on eighteenth-century poetry to appear in recent years. -- Stephen C. Behrendt Wordsworth Circle