Anne Hunter

Standard Name: Hunter, Anne
AH was admired during the Romantic period for her poetry, most of it songs and ballads. She wrote her own music for some; Haydn set many others. She also wrote occasional poetry of many kinds: family poems, elegies, and comment on public events.
Engraving by W. W. Ryland from a lost painting by Angellica Kauffman of Anne Hunter in 1767, before her marriage. She is shown with her forehead resting on an urn; the picture was titled "The Pensive Muse"..

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Joanna Baillie
His wife, Anne Hunter , was a poet and musician.
Friends, Associates Anne Grant
She became a noted figure in Edinburgh literary and social circles. Among her friends were Lady Charlotte Campbell (later Bury) ,
Paston, George, and George Paston. “Mrs. Grant of Laggan”. Little Memoirs of the Eighteenth Century, E. P. Dutton, 1901, pp. 237-96.
284
Lord Jeffrey , Sir Walter Scott , Henry Mackenzie , and other literati...
Intertextuality and Influence Joanna Baillie
JB later recounted how at the age of twenty-two she wrote her first play, inspired by theatre-going, and her first serious poem, the blank-verse A Winter Day, inspired by the poetry of her aunt...
Literary responses Joanna Baillie
The Critical Review assumed the author was male. It thought the versification monotonous but warmly praised both preface and plays.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
24 (1798): 1-22
Initial reaction from individuals (mostly favourable) concentrated on the puzzle of authorship...
Occupation Lady Eleanor Butler
In addition to their better-known activities, the women became antiquarians with a particular interest in women's writing. They copied early texts by women, like Ann Fanshawe 's still unpublished Memoirs. Henrietta Maria Bowdler sent...
Publishing Helena Wells
She published this with Longman , signing her preface Helena Wells Whitford, though the title-page says only by the Author of the Step-Mother. Subscribers included Joanna Baillie and Anne Hunter . The title-page...
Reception Alison Cockburn
AC enjoyed the popular, unpublished poetic fame that this piece brought her. As for printing, never fear. I hate print, and though I have been sung at wells to the flowers of the forrest, I...
Textual Features Elizabeth Cobbold
This collection features poetry by women such as Anna Maria Porter , Amelia Opie , Lucy Aikin , Elizabeth Carter , Anna Letitia Barbauld , Anne Hunter , Mary RobinsonCharlotte Smith , and EC herself.
Textual Features Christian Isobel Johnstone
The title-page of the first quotes from Francis Bacon (Knowledge is Power) and from the mother of Sir William Jones (Read and you will know).
Johnstone, Christian Isobel. Diversions of Hollycot. Oliver and Boyd, 1828.
title-page
It portrays the widow Mrs...
Textual Production Charlotte Mary Brame
Published with an epigraph from Anne Hunter about the emotional cost of keeping a painful secret, Lady Damer's Secret presumably drew inspiration for its title from Mary Elizabeth Braddon 's Lady Audley's Secret, although...
Textual Production Annie S. Swan
ASS also used her new identity David Lyall for a large number of book titles, most of them novels after the first collection of essays. She published Lyall novels serially in the Leisure Hour Monthly...
Textual Production Joanna Baillie
She thus made part of the Scottish ballad revival forwarded by individuals of several generations including Allan Ramsay , Elizabeth, Lady Wardlaw , Jean Elliott , Alison Cockburn , her aunt Anne Hunter , Burns
Textual Production Joanna Baillie
She agreed to do this without payment, though Thomson gave her an Indian shawl when adding to his first request six years later.
Baillie, Joanna. “Introduction”. The Selected Poems of Joanna Baillie, 1762-1851, edited by Jennifer Breen, Manchester University Press, 1999, pp. 1-25.
9, 11
Baillie at first demurred, claiming that her talents did not...

Timeline

April 1782: Hester Thrale recorded in her journal a poem...

Women writers item

April 1782

Hester Thrale recorded in her journal a poem by Anne Hunter which seems to be the first English rendering of a Native American death song.
Lonsdale, Roger, editor. Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. Oxford University Press, 1990.
363-4

Texts

Armstrong, Isobel, and Anne Hunter. “Introduction”. The Life and Poems of Anne Hunter, Haydn’s Tuneful Voice, Liverpool University Press, 2009, pp. 1-11.
Hunter, Anne. Nine Canzonetts for Two Voices. Longman and Broderip, 1782.
Hunter, Anne. Poems. 1802.
Hunter, Anne. The Life and Poems of Anne Hunter, Haydn’s Tuneful Voice. Editor Grigson, Caroline, Liverpool University Press, 2009.
Hunter, Anne. The Sports of the Genii. T. Payne, 1804.