Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry

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.

• AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsPlan of the BookApproaching the PoetryThe Chapters1. IntroductionChanging ContextsSystems, Gender, and Persistent IssuesAgency and the ''Marked Marker''2. Anne Finch and What Women WroteThe Social and the FormalAnne Finch and Popular PoetryPoetry on PoetryThe Spleen as Legacy3. Women and Poetry in the Public EyePoetry as News and CritiqueThe Woman QuestionElizabeth Singer Rowe4. Hymns, Narratives, and Innovations in Religious PoetryThe Voice of ParaphraseThe Hymn as Personal LyricReligious Poetry as Subversive NarrativeDevout Soliloquies5. Friendship PoemsThe Legacy of Katherine PhilipsEncouragement and the CounteruniverseJane BreretonAdaptation and Ideology6. Retirement PoetryBeyond ConventionMemory, Time, and Elizabeth CarterReflection and Difference7. The ElegyWhat Did Women Write?Representative Composers: Darwall and SewardThe Elegy and Same-Sex DesireEntertainment and Forgetting8. The Sonnet, Charlotte Smith, and What Women WroteThe Sonnet and the PoliticalSonnet SequencesWomen Poets and the Spread of the SonnetThe Emigrants, Conversations, and Beachy HeadSmith as Transitional Poet9. ConclusionBiographies of the PoetsNotesBibliographyIndex

Backscheider... writes with an ease and clarity that make this book fully accessible. Choice 2006 Passionate and wide-ranging study. -- Helen Deutsch London Review of Books 2006 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 2006 For specialists of eighteenth-century literature in English, this is a must-read book. -- Betty A. Schellenberg Eighteenth-Century Studies 2006 This book paves the way for further work and is itself a valuable contribution to exciting nascent debates. -- Louise Marshall Modern Language Review 2008 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 2008 One of the best and most significant books on eighteenth-century poetry to appear in recent years. -- Stephen C. Behrendt Wordsworth Circle 2007