Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Ann Yearsley
-
Standard Name: Yearsley, Ann
Birth Name: Ann Cromartie
Married Name: Ann Yearsley
Pseudonym: The Milkwoman
Nickname: Lactilla, or the Bristol Milkwoman
AY
became famous at the outset of her career as a primitive or untaught poet: a role she herself rejected in the course of a bitter row with her patron Hannah More
. She went on to publish without the help of patrons, and to add a play and a novel to her poetry. Her letters remained unpublished. Though actually far from uneducated (she packs her poems with literary allusions), she is a writer who lays less emphasis on formal structures or conventions than on sturdy individualism and on the Romantic outpouring of emotion.
To demonstrate, as well as arguing for, mental equality, MR
learnedly surveys the course of political and literary history. She honours many women writers of the past (Aphra Behn
and Susanna Centlivre
as well...
Textual Features
Mary Maria Colling
As its extended title suggests, the book is prefaced by three letters from Bray to Southey. The correspondence provided the Poet Laureate with MMC
's life history, as well as examples of her poems. The...
Textual Production
Hannah More
HM
wrote her first surviving letter about Ann Yearsley
to Elizabeth Montagu
, recounting in high terms the former's intense gratitude to the latter.
Waldron, Mary. Lactilla, Milkwoman of Clifton: The Life and Writings of Ann Yearsley, 1753-1806. University of Georgia Press, 1996.
49
Textual Production
Eliza Fletcher
Eliza Dawson (later EF
) sent to Ann Yearsley
a poetic epistle whose topics included despair (apparently ascribing that emotion to Yearsley).
Waldron, Mary. “A Different Kind of Patronage: Ann Yearsley’s Later Friends”. The Age of Johnson, edited by Paul J. Korshin and Jack Lynch, Vol.
13
, AMS Press, 2002, pp. 283-35.
307
Textual Production
Hannah More
HM
composed a Prefatory Letter to Montagu
, telling her about Yearsley
, designed for printing at the head of Yearsley's poems to be published by subscription.
Waldron, Mary. Lactilla, Milkwoman of Clifton: The Life and Writings of Ann Yearsley, 1753-1806. University of Georgia Press, 1996.
60
Textual Production
Hannah More
HM
wrote to tell Montagu
of Yearsley
's blackest ingratitude.
Waldron, Mary. Lactilla, Milkwoman of Clifton: The Life and Writings of Ann Yearsley, 1753-1806. University of Georgia Press, 1996.
65
Textual Production
Charlotte Nooth
His De la littérature des Nègres in its original form reflects internationalism, anglophilia, and perhaps even proto-feminism. The title-page quotes Mary Robinson
. The roll of honour of white activists for abolition and racial equality...
Textual Production
Jane Cave
Twenty people were killed in this episode, which happened on 30 September. The pamphlets containing JC
's poem survive in Bristol Central Reference Library
.
Schürer, Norbert. “Jane Cave Winscom: Provincial Poetry and the Metropolitan Connection”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
36
, No. 3, Sept. 2013, pp. 415-31.
421n37
It was duly added to her next collection. Ann Yearsley
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Judith Sargent Murray
Constantia's Preface to the Reader of the collected volumes, dated 16 March 1797 and signed with her female pseudonym,
Murray, Judith Sargent. The Gleaner. I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews, 1798, 3 vols.
1: ix
says she is a lover of humanity, and that her ruling passion [is]...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Eliza Fletcher
The correspondence concerned books read, benevolent schemes undertaken (some having to do with inoculation or with Sunday schools), and particularly efforts to secure a career and literary income for the poet Ann Yearsley
.
Waldron, Mary. “A Different Kind of Patronage: Ann Yearsley’s Later Friends”. The Age of Johnson, edited by Paul J. Korshin and Jack Lynch, Vol.
13
, AMS Press, 2002, pp. 283-35.
290, 294, 295ff
Travel
Eliza Fletcher
Independent-minded as she was, EF
faced restrictions on her activities as an unmarried girl. She had been taken on a tour of the Scottish Highlands in 1786, but now when she badly wanted to travel...
