The Romantics: Women Poets: 1770-1830

It is sometimes said that the literature of the Romantic period is gendered in its genres: the novel was dominated by women and poetry by men. In fact, the age of Romanticism boasts a formidable array of women poets, who captured the literary market in the 1770s. Inspired by the bluestocking salon of Elizabeth Carter and Elizabeth Montagu and by the Evangelical movement, poets such as Anna Barbauld and Hannah More became respected and successful writers. They in turn often acted as patrons for aspiring working-class women poets like Anne Yearsley, the poetical milkwoman of Bristol . A new generation was inspired by this example, including Helen Maria Williams and Mary Robinson, both fired with enthusiasm for the French revolution, the feminism of Mary Wollstonecraft and fashionable literary sentimentalism. Joanna Baillie, famed for her verse drama, was hailed as the Shakespeare of her age in the 1790s. By the beginning of the nineteenth century a younger generation of popular poets led by Felicia Hemans earned sizeable incomes by writing poetry extolling a domestic and patriotic ideology which became so beloved of the Victorians. This collection, including material never before reprinted, offers an insight into the changing face of Romantic women’s poetry. With these works only now coming under critical scrutiny, the volumes gathered here represent an invaluable source for the modern reader.