Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope used a poem by AB , The Golden Age, in his Peri Bathous; or, The Art of Sinking in Poetry, as an example of the despised Florid Style. To sharpen his...

It has been until recently a given of literary history that William Beckford had his half-sister in his sights in his two burlesques on women's novel-writing. The title-page of the first quotes Pope , thus...

She travelled with her brother Alexander , heading for his post on St Kitts; she may have intended to live with him there (having no male relations left at home since her father's death)...

Overall, ML 's poetic forms are those current in her day. Her model was Pope , whom she admired as an artist and identified with as having, like herself, physical disabilities to contend with. But...

Her poetry as a whole is conspicuous for its versatility. Her major early influences (Katherine Philips and Abraham Cowley ) were succeeded by Dryden . (She always denied any influence from Pope .) But...

This novel provides a satirical portrait of high society in early eighteenth-century England. It centres on Henrietta, Countess of Marchmont, an upper-class orphan enduring a loveless marriage and imperilled by her first visit to...

The Compleat Housewife, a comic ghost story, brings together a Southern American belle (who has married an English baronet) with his ancestress Lady Deborah Corbryan The story makes use of recipes drawn, says CG

She consistently takes a challenging stance in face of authority. Ironically (in view of Johnson's championing of women writers and Burns's snobbish attitude about herself) she uses Samuel Johnson as a symbol of the tyrant-critic...

The elderly lady, Lady Arabella, represents a chilly view of the English aristocracy. She opens her story with a paean in praise of past times and in dispraise of the present: How interminably long the...

The Art of Tormenting is often referred to as a novel, but its genre is really that of the spoof instruction manual: the genre of Pope 's The Art of Sinking in Poetry and Swift

The tone of the work is conservative, leavened with an intelligent concern for development of independent thinking. Topics of various letters include Conduct and Conversation, Forbearance, Chastity, Truth, Employment of Time...

She advises about relations with servants, about prompt payment of bills, and other aspects of running a complicated household. She says there will always be vacant Hours to fill up with reading, and offers...

EB offers original, discriminating praise for women's writing: Susanna Centlivre (her inspiration, she says), Eliza Haywood (though she regrets her exposure of women's faults), Aphra Behn , and Delarivier Manley , whom she calls the...

The poem is headed with a quotation from Psalm 19: The Heavens declare the Glory of God, & the Firmament showeth his handy work—the same psalm which Addison had famously rendered as The spacious...

Manley's elegist hails the elder writer as Life of my Muse! and tuneful Mistress of my Mind, dressed in immortal honours. Her own muse, she said, would have been strengthened for the Race...