Table of Contents

Contents: Acknowledgments Introduction Editorial Note Maria Abdy (c. 1797-1867) An Original Thought My Very Particular FriendLucy Aikin (1781-1864) from Epistles on WomenJane Austen (1775-1817) Verses to Rhyme with "Rose" On a HeadacheJoanna Baillie (1762-1851) Wind Thunder The Kitten Up! Quit Thy Bower! Woo'd and Married and A' Address to a Steam-Vessel Song ("The gliding fish that takes his play") The Sun Is Down Lines to a Teapot The Maid of LlanwellynAnna Letitia Barbauld (1743-1825) The Mouse's Petition An Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestley's Study A Summer Evening's Meditation Tomorrow Inscription for an Ice-House To the Poor Washing-Day Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, A Poem Life The Baby-House Riddle ("From rosy bowers we issue forth")Mrs. E. -G. Bayfield (A. 1803-1816) The Danger of DiscontentElizabeth Bentley (1767-1839) To a RedbreastMatilda Betham (1776-1852) To Miss Rouse Boughton, Now the Right Hon. Lady St. John Sonnet ("Urge me no more!") To a Llangollen Rose, The Day after It Had Been Given by Miss Ponsonby Fragment ("A Pilgrim weary, toil-subdued") The Daughter II ("Lucy, I think not of my beauty") VII ("Come, Magdalen, and bind my hair")Susanna Blamire (1747-1794) The Nabob The Siller Croun What Ails This Heart o'Mine? The Chelsea Pensioners Barley Broth Stoklewath; or, The Cumbrian Village Countess of Blessington (1790-1849) Stock in Trade of Modern PoetessesMary Ann Browne (1812-1844) A World without Water The Song of the Elements The Wild Horse To a Wild BeeLady Byron (nee Anne Isabella Milbanke) (1792-1860) To AdaDorothea Primrose Campbell (1793-1863) The Shetland FishermanAnn Candler (1740-1814) Reflections on My Own SituationElizabeth Cobbold (nee Eliza Knipe) (1767-1824) On the Lake of Windermere Keswick The Nurse and the NewspaperSara Coleridge (1802-1852) Poppies I Was a Brook Blest Is the Tarn Milk-White Doe, 'Tis But the Breeze I Tremble When with Look Benign The Captive Bird with Ardour SingsHannah Cowley (1743-1809) Monologue InvocationAnn Batten Cristall (c. 1768-after 1816) Written in Devonshire, near the Dart To a Lady, on the Rise of Morn Songs of Arla (from "The Enthusias") Song I ("Wild wing my notes, fierce passions urge the strain") Song II ("With awe my soul the wreck of Nature views") Song III ("Impassion'd strains my trembling lips rehearse") Verses Written in the Spring A Song of Arla Written during her Enthusiasm An Ode ("Almighty Power! who rul'st this world of storms!") Song on Leaving the Country Early in the SpringCatherine Ann Dorset (1750?-1817?) The Humble Bee To the Lady-BirdMaria Edgeworth (1768-1849) On Chauntry's Statue of Watt in Handsworth Church To Mrs. Carr Laura Leicester With a Dyed Silk Quilt Sent to Aunt RuxtonSusan Evance (A. 1808-1818) Sonnet to Melancholy Sonnet Written in a Ruinous Abbey Sonnet to a Violet Sonnet to the Clouds Written during a Storm of WindCatherine Maria Fanshawe (1765-1834) A Riddle (" 'Twas in heaven pronounced, and 'twas muttered in hell") Fragment in Imitation of WordsworthAnne Grant (Mrs. Grant of Laggan) (1755-1838) PostscriptElizabeth Hands (A. 1789) A Poem, on the Supposition of an Advertisement Appearing in a Morning Paper A Poem, on the Supposition of the Book Having Been Published and Read Written, Originally Extempore, on Seeing a Mad Heifer Run through the Village A Song ("Ye swains cease to flatter") On a Wedding The Widower's Courtship Mary Hays (1760-1843) Invocation to the Nightingale Ode to Her BullfinchFelicia Hemans (1793-1835) Epitaph on Mr. W --, a Celebrated Mineralogist Epitaph on the Hammer of the Aforesaid Mineralogist The Voice of Spring The Messenger Bird Bring Flowers Troubadour Song The Graves of a Household The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England A Monarch's Death-Bed Gertrude, or Fidelity till Death Casabianca The Wings of the Dove The Image in Lava The Coronation of Inez de Castro Indian Woman's Death-Song Arabella Stuart The Dreamer The Return The Painter's Last Work - A Scene I Dream of All Things FreeMary Howitt (1799-1888) The Countess Lamberti The Spider and the Fly The Voyage with the Nautilus Tibbie Inglis, or The Scholar's Wooing The Nettle-King The Broom-Flower A Swinging Song The Sea-Gull Old Christmas The Fairies of the Caldon LowAnna Maria Jones (1748-1829) Sonnet to the MoonLady Caroline Lamb (1785-1828) Invocation to SleepLetitia Elizabeth Landon (1802-1838) The Oak Home Another Epistle to Nell To My Aunty On Reading Lady Mary Montague and Mrs. Rowe's Letters To a Lady Who Sent the Author Some Paper with a Reading of Sillar's Poems Given to a Lady Who Asked Me to Write a Poem On Seeing Mr. -- Baking Cakes The Month's LoveMaria Logan (fl. 1793) To Opium Verses on Hearing That an Airy and Pleasant Situation... Was Surrounded with New BuildingsChristian Milne (1773-after 1816) To a Lady, Who Did Me the Honour to Call at My House Sent with a Flower Pot, Begging a Slip of Geranium On a Lady, Who Spoke with Some Ill-Nature of the Advertisement of My Little Work in the "Aberdeen Journal" To a Gentleman, Desirous of Seeing My Manuscripts Song ("At eve, when Dee's transparent stream")Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855) Winter Scenery, January, 1809 To Mr. LucasElizabeth Moody (d. 1814) To Dr. Darwin, On Reading His Loves of the Plants To Sleep, a Song The Housewife; or, The Muse Learning to Ride the Great Horse HeroicHannah More (1745-1833) The Black Slave Trade. A Poem Countess of Morley (1781-1857) A Party of Pleasure up the River Tamer EpilogueCarolina, Baroness Nairne (1766-1845) The Laird o' Cockpen Caller Herrin' The Lass o' Gowrie John Tod The Land o' the Leal Caroline Norton (1808-1877) I Do Not Love Thee The Faithless Knight We Have Been Friends Together The Arab's Farewell to His HorseHenrietta O'Neill (1758-1793) Ode to the PoppyAmelia Opie (1769-1853) Ode: Written on the Opening of the Last Campaign Stanzas Written under Aeolus's Harp Allen Brooke, of Windermere An Evening Walk at Cromer Song ("I know you false") Song ("Go, youth beloved") The Despairing WandererIsabel Pagan (c. 1741-1821) Ca' the Ewes to the Knowes The Crook and Plaid Account of the Author's Lifetime A New Love Song, with the Answer The Answer On Burns and Ramsay A Letter The Spinning Wheel A Love Letter Muirkirk Light WeightsAnn Radcliffe (1764-1823) To the Nightingale Song of a Spirit Sunset The First Hour of Morning Sonnet ("Now the bat circles on the breeze of eve") To Melancholy The Sea-Nymph Rondeau Storied Sonnet Shakspeare's Cliff To the River Dove The Sea-Mew On a First View of the Group Called the Seven Mountains A Second View of the Seven MountainsEmma Roberts (1794?-1840) Song ("Upon the Ganges' regal stream")Mary Robinson (1758-1800) The Linnet

About the Author

Paula R. Feldman holds the C. Wallace Martin Chair in English at the University of South Carolina. She is coeditor of The Journals of Mary Shelley and Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices and is editor of Felicia Hemans's Records of Woman.

Reviews

Will inevitably shape interpretation and mark out a canon... Feldman is... [a] disciplined, lucid, and meticulous editor... [Her] comprehensive collection enables the reader to see what working-class poets such as Janet Little and Christian Milne were writing, and to sample such sports as the Countess of Blessington's satire on sentiment... and Catherine Maria Fanshawe's parody of Wordsworth's combination of pantheism and literalism. -- Isobel Armstrong Times Literary Supplement A singular resource providing information found in no other reference work... This anthology of works by 62 British women poets writing between 1770 and 1840... makes it clear that Romantic poetry encompasses much more than Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Library Journal A wide-ranging selection of poems written by British women from all kinds of backgrounds and geographical locations... Detailed, scholarly headnotes... [provide] a clearer, more inflected understanding of this outstandingly prolific period in the history of women's writing. -- Lucy Newlyn Review of English Studies