Anna Seward

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Standard Name: Seward, Anna
Birth Name: Anna Seward
Nickname: The Swan of Lichfield
Nickname: Nancy
AS , living at a distance from London, was nevertheless a woman of letters, of the later eighteenth century and just beyond. She staked her claim to fame firstly on her poetry (though she was always willing to try genres unusual to her, like sermons and a biography of Erasmus Darwin ), secondly on her letters. In these and in her newspaper contributions she was also a literary critic, familiar with the criteria of both the Augustan and Romantic eras and gifted besides with an unfailing independence of judgement.
Photograph of a painting of Anna Seward by Tilly Kettle, 1762. Seward is seated at a desk with a little book of Milton's poetry in front of her. She is wearing a white gauzy bodice with wide sleeves, a deep pink mantle edged with brown fur, and a black ribbon and a string of pearls as a choker around her neck. Her dark hair is pinned on top of her head with a pearl ornament. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Ann Radcliffe
Anna Seward , in letters which were to be published in AR 's lifetime, mixed her praise of her gothic oeuvre with some trenchant criticism.
Norton, Rictor. Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. Leicester University Press, 1999.
221-2
Nathan Drake called Radcliffe the Shakespeare of Romance Writers...
Literary responses Hannah Cowley
Anna Seward included HC among her seven celebrated Female Poets
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
59 (1789): 292
of the present day in April 1789. Recent critical comment on her includes an examination of her use of marriage law in...
Literary responses Margaret Holford
In June 1806 Seward wrote to a friend who had just met the young Holford, about Holford's poetry and particularly the beautiful elegy, addressed to me (which may or may not be the above-mentioned ode)...
Occupation Anna Miller
The Batheaston Vase was important in several literary careers, notably those of Anna Seward , Jane Bowdler , and Mary Alcock . Other winners, like Jane Johnson 's daughter Barbara , seem never to have...
Publishing Mary Martha Sherwood
MMS wrote later, It was a matter of course to me that I was to write, and also a matter of instinct. My head was always busy in inventions, and it was a delight to...
Publishing Mary Scott
The Gentleman's Magazine printed MS 's Verses Addressed to Miss Seward , on the Publication of her Monody on Major André.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Publishing Charlotte Brooke
Her father had cherished a never-executed project for a history of ancient Irish literature.
Ashley, Leonard R. N. et al. “Introduction”. Reliques of Irish Poetry, Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1970, p. v - xv.
vi
She had issued Proposals for this work the year before publication. The Houghton Library copy of the Proposals incorporates a...
Publishing Elizabeth Hands
The advertisement for the book in print, like the pre-notification, was carried by Jopson's Coventry Mercury. The volume was dedicated to the dramatist Bertie Greatheed . It was issued in two forms: ordinary copies...
Publishing Helen Maria Williams
HMW published her Poem on the Bill Lately Passed for Regulating the Slave Trade. (The bill was that of Sir William Dolben .) She sent a copies of her poem to Robert Burns (who...
Publishing Helen Maria Williams
The Poems were in two volumes, with HMW 's name in full, published by Rivington and Marshall , with an engraved frontispiece drawn by Maria Cosway . Subscribers included the Prince of Wales (whose name...
Publishing Helen Maria Williams
It appeared in two volumes from Cadell . It was advertised in March, and in April Williams sent a copy to Anna Seward .
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
1: 519
Michael-Johnston, Georgina. Helen Maria Williams: Liberty, Sensibility, and Education. University of Alberta, 1998.
149, 156
A prefatory Advertisement says that her materials...
Reception Hannah More
Again this work generated both a flood of praise (much of it in letters, some coming from religious leaders or from royalty) and a storm of criticism and abuse.
qtd. in
Jones, Mary Gwladys. Hannah More. Cambridge University Press, 1952.
120
The Bishop of London...
Reception Hannah Glasse
This book came to dominate its field. It was widely believed in the book-trade to be the work of a man. The publisher Edward Dilly in 1778 informed a gathering which included Samuel Johnson and...
Reception J. S. Anna Liddiard
The Poetical Register damned this volume with faint praise, as not disfigured by any gross faults. In the preface to her next work, JSAL took issue with the Monthly's yet more unflattering notice, which...
Reception Héloïse
Anna Seward 's Memoirs of Abelard and Eloisa, 1805, certainly ranks as scholarship, though it concerns itself more with reputation and afterlife than with the actual life or writings of Héloïse . From the...

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