English Women’s Poetry
Elizabethan to Victorian
edited with an introduction and notes
by R.E. Pritchard
For
Susan, John and Anna
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Further Reading
QUEEN ELIZABETH I (1533–1603)
Written with a Diamond on her Window at Woodstock
Written on a Wall at Woodstock
Written in her French Psalter
The Doubt of Future Foes
On Monsieur’s Departure
ISABELLA WHITNEY (fl. 1567)
from The Admonition by the Auctor
Wyll and Testament
LADY MARY HERBERT, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE (1561–1621)
Psalm 57: Miserere Mei, Deus
Psalm 58: Si Vere Utique
Psalm 92: Bonum Est Confiteri
Psalm 139: Domine, Probasti
EMILIA LANYER (156–1645)
The Description of Cooke-ham
LADY MARY WROTH (1587?–1652?)
Sonnets from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus
from The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania
ANNE BRADSTREET (1613?–1672)
The Prologue
To my Dear and loving Husband
Before the Birth of one of her Children
A letter to her Husband
Upon the Burning of our House
AN COLLINS (fl. 1653?)
Song
Another Song
MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE (1624?–1674)
An Excuse for so much writ upon my Verses
‘A Poet I am neither born, nor bred’
Of the Theam of Love
Natures Cook
A Dissert
Soule, and Body
A Woman drest by Age
Of the Animal Spirits
A Dialogue betwixt the Body and the Mind
from The Fort or Castle of Hope
A Discourse of Beasts
KATHERINE PHILIPS (1631–1664)
Friendship’s Mystery
To my Excellent Lucasia
An Answer to another persuading a Lady to marriage
To the Queen of Inconstancy
Epitaph on her Son H. P.
Lucasia, Rosania and Orinda parting at a Fountain
Love Arm’d
Song: The Willing Mistriss
The Disappointment
To Alexis
To the fair Clarinda
MARY LADY CHUDLEIGH (1656–1710)
from The Ladies Defence
To the Ladies
‘EPHELIA’ (fl. 1679?)
On a Bashful Shepherd
To One that asked me why I loved J. G.
Maidenhead
To a Proud Beauty
In the Person of a Lady, to Bajazet
ANNE KILLIGREW (1660–1685)
On a picture painted by her self
On Death
Upon the saying that my verses were made by another
ANNE FINCH, COUNTESS OF WINCHILSEA (1661–1720)
The Introduction
A Letter to Daphnis
from The Spleen
The Unequal Fetters
A Nocturnal Reverie
SARAH FYGE EGERTON (1669–1723)
from The Female Advocate
The Liberty
The Emulation
ELIZABETH SINGER ROWE (1674–1737)
To Celinda
The Expostulation
from To one that persuades me to leave the Muses
To Orestes
from A Paraphrase on the Canticles
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU (1689–1762)
from Six Town Eclogues
The Lover
A Receipt to Cure the Vapours
‘Between your sheets’
MARY COLLIER (1690?-after 1762)
The Womans Labour
LAETITIA PILKINGTON (1712?–1750)
The Wish
Dol and Roger
A Song
A Song
Fair and Softly goes far
MARY LEAPOR (1722–1746)
from Essay on Friendship
from The Head-ache
The Sacrifice
On Winter
Mira’s Will
MARY JONES (d. 1778)
from An Epistle to Lady Bowyer
After the Small Pox
Soliloquy on an empty Purse
ANNA LAETITIA BARBAULD (1743–1825)
On a Lady’s Writing
Tomorrow
Washing-Day
The Rights of Woman
ANNA SEWARD (1742–1809)
Verses inviting Mrs C—to Tea
from Colebrook Dale
Invocation, To the Genius of Slumber
HANNAH MORE (1745–1833)
from The Bas Bleu
The Riot
CHARLOTTE SMITH (1749–1806)
Written at the Churchyard at Middleton
On the Aphorism: ‘L’Amitié est l’amour sans ailes’
from Beachy Head
Thirty-Eight
DOROTHY WORDSWORTH (1771–1855)
Grasmere – a Fragment
Floating Island at Hawkshead
Thoughts on my sick-bed
JANE TAYLOR (1783–1824)
Recreation
The Squire’s Pew
FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS (1793–1835)
The Homes of England
The Indian Woman’s Death Song
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806–1861)
from Sonnets from the Portuguese
To George Sand
from Casa Guidi Windows
from Aurora Leigh
A Musical Instrument
CHARLOTTE BRONTË (1816–1855)
‘Again I find myself alone’
‘What does she dream of’
Diving
from Retrospection
EMILY BRONTË (1818–1848)
‘High waving heather’
Plead for Me
Remembrance
‘No coward soul is mine’
Stanzas
ANNE BRONTË (1820–1849)
Song
JEAN INGELOW (1820–1897)
from Divided
The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire, 1571
DORA GREENWELL (1821–1882)
A Scherzo
The Sunflower
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (1830–1894)
Remember
The World
From the Antique
Echo
In an Artist’s Studio
A Birthday
Up-Hill
Amor Mundi
LOUISA S. BEVINGTON (later GUGGENBERGER) (b. 1845)
Morning
Afternoon
Twilight
Midnight
from Two Songs
Wrestling
ALICE MEYNELL (1847–1922)
Renouncement
The Shepherdess
Maternity
Parentage
A Dead Harvest
Chimes
EDITH NESBIT (1858–1924)
Song
Among His Books
The Gray Folk
Villeggiature
AMY LEVY (1861–1889)
London Poets
Epitaph
A London Plane-Tree
In the Mile End Road
The Old House
MARY COLERIDGE (1861–1907)
The Other Side of a Mirror
A Mom
ent
In Dispraise of the Moon
The Poison Flower
An Insincere Wish Addressed to a Beggar
Marriage
The White Woman
Notes
Index of First Lines
Copyright
An asterisk by the title in the text indicates that there are notes to the poem at the end of the book.
Acknowledgements
The editor and publishers gratefully acknowledge permission to use copyright material in this book as follows:
Mary Coleridge: reprinted from The Collected Poems of Mary Coleridge, edited by Theresa Whistler (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954), by permission of the editor.
Elizabeth I: reprinted from The Poems of Queen Elizabeth I, edited by Leicester Bradner, by permission of the University Press of New England. Copyright © 1984 by Brown University.
Mary (Sidney) Herbert: reprinted from The Psalms of Sir Philip Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke, edited by J.C.A. Rathmell, by permission of New York University Press.
Emilia Lanyer: reprinted from The Poems of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady, edited by A.L. Rowse (Jonathan Cape, 1978), by permission of the editor.
Mary Wortley Montagu: reprinted from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Essays and Poems, edited by Robert Halsband and Isobel Grundy (Clarendon Press, 1977), by permission of Isobel Grundy.
Dorothy Wordsworth: reprinted from Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism by Susan M. Levin, by permission of Rutgers State University Press and the Wordsworth Trust, Dove Cottage, Grasmere.
Mary Wroth: reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press from The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth, edited by Josephine A. Roberts. Copyright© 1983 Louisiana State University Press.
Every effort has been made to secure permission to include the poems in this anthology; the editor and publishers would be grateful for notification of any omissions or corrections.
Introduction
An anthologist of women’s poetry from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century has the pleasure and advantage of dealing with relatively little-known poetry, of a remarkably wide range – here are to be found both love-song and feminist polemic, witty satire and religious rhapsody, bawdy fun and grave meditation. Not everyone might approve of an anthology deliberately confined to writers of one sex, but the fact is that far too few ordinary readers and students have been able to get a fair sense of the variety and vitality of English women’s poetry over these centuries. Quite simply, there are some very good poems in here, and some remarkable poets, that should be better known. Yet, often, it has hardly been apparent that they were there at all. Apart from a handful of the romanticized famous, even the more considerable have had to wait until fairly recently for sound editions, let alone general recognition. To some extent, of course, it has been cultural prejudice (conscious or unconscious, and shared by women) that has led to women poets’ near-absence from the standard, period anthologies (though that is now becoming less the case); partly they were elbowed out by the acknowledged major authors, partly not recognized by a taste unfamiliar with feminine attitudes and themes. Here, at any rate, is a selection, made not to illustrate any thesis, but simply to bring together some lively and engaging poems that should appeal to many modern readers, and provide an introduction to an important and neglected element in English poetic history.
We need to extend our sense of the history or pattern of English poetry, to bring in the overlooked. There is no one canon of English poetry – rather, a constantly shifting set of engagements and valuations produced by changing responses to contemporary life: as we see the present differently, so we cannot but see the past differently. An apparent absence proves not to have been a vacancy: muted voices become audible, individual, various, in a dialect different but recognizable and intriguing.
In this volume, spelling and typographic conventions regarding the use of capitals, italics and so on, have been brought into line with modern usage (though punctuation is usually unchanged); while this makes for greater accessibility, one should not forget what varying appearances suggest – that different linguistic usages are inseparable from changing cultures and assumptions. We are dealing with products of a patriarchal society evolving over some four hundred years. It is important to remember how much our experiences, and the words for them, are culturally shaped and conditioned: friendship, love, marriage, husband, wife, home – all have had different significances, for both sexes at different times. We should not read these poems assuming that their writers felt quite what we might feel with or through their words. Their voices echo out of the past: though the experiences and responses are recognizable, we may not catch everything they say.
Obviously, the primary psychological development of the sexes differs, producing different conceptions of interiority, identity and relationships. Even though these are partially products of the orderings developed through the shared language, one must recognize that access to and usage of these discourses is not the same for men and women. Whole ranges of behaviour – linguistic, social, sexual, economic – have been unavailable to women, virtually unthinkable, precluded by various circumstances: lack of education, religious or class proscriptions or inhibitions, assumptions of innate incapacity, as well as, for many, by lack of time, money or access. Necessarily this has affected attitudes to writing, both fundamentally – as to whether one writes, or why, or for whom – and more obviously, in relation to conventions that are gender-oriented, such as Renaissance Petrarchist love-poetry, or Romantic myths of Mother Nature. The cultural myths, concerns and changes of their times appear in women’s verse, but often differently, or indirectly. Women might be seen as constituting a major social grouping within the changing cultures of their times, with – like other groupings – varying access to and representation in the discourses of those times, and with varying degrees of awareness of constituting such a group (awareness of other affinities, such as of class or religion, sometimes being more significant). One cannot readily speak of a tradition of women’s poetry during these years – writers would need a stronger sense of a common pursuit among predecessors and contemporaries – let alone a movement, except perhaps towards the end, though some continuities and developments might be traced. Some common themes do appear in women’s poetry, of course – friendship between women; complaints against male dominance, with demands for equality and self-determination; love (variously understood); children; domestic life; sympathy with oppressed groups; the necessity of self-expression (or is it self-creation?) through writing – but changing in emphasis with changing circumstances.
The Renaissance humanist tradition of the educated lady is represented here by Queen Elizabeth, Mary Herbert and Mary Wroth: religious or moral writing was all that might be approved for ladies then; courtiers might write for self-advertisement and career advancement, but such objectives were in any case inappropriate or irrelevant to the women. The lower orders were rarely literate, with necessarily limited horizons: Isabella Whitney’s education and literary ambitions were both very unusual. Social tension about gender roles and women’s position developed during the earlier seventeenth century, as other social, religious and political strains increased; merchant-class Nonconformity was to prove beneficial to women’s interests, in encouraging literacy for independent Bible study, while devotional and ‘prophetic’ writing flourished (one might think of An Collins, or Anne Bradstreet); the Civil War provided many occasions for self-assertion, as Margaret Cavendish’s activities might suggest. The Restoration’s brief openness to personal, economic and sexual expression, and new demand for entertainment, were in practice mixed blessings. Sexual activity was flaunted (Behn, Ephelia, Pilkington – Montagu: but she was an aristocrat, and could get away with it!), but also provoked prim reactions, whereby it became even less respectable for ladies to publish (Cavendish was derided, Philips, Ephelia and Finch all published pseudonymously). For some years, the theme of women’s rights in the face of husbands’ absolute powers became almost a minor g
enre, to be exercised by any self-respecting woman writer (Chudleigh, Elizabeth Tollet), before the blanket of Whig complacency settled down.
The eighteenth century saw increasing numbers of middle-class women taking up writing – especially of novels (Charlotte Smith) – to satisfy the growing numbers of literate and (involuntarily) leisured women of that class, actually discouraged from independent activity and increasingly confined to a private, domestic life, subject to growing cults of motherhood and refined manners. Some, such as Mary Jones, or Fanny Burney, associated themselves with important male writers, such as Pope, Richardson and Johnson; others with ladies’ literary and philanthropic groups, producing Popean satire or sympathy with the deserving oppressed – slaves, chimney-sweeps, lower-class women writers (such as Leapor and the milk-woman poet Ann Yearsley) – while discouraging serious social questioning (Hannah More). The lower orders, trapped by poor education and by hard labour away from home, in agriculture, domestic service or the mills, produced the social complaint (Collier). The Nonconformist, progressive tradition continued to be one of major and increasing importance for women writers (Barbauld, Taylor)
The literary lady became increasingly established (More, Barbauld, Hemans); from the Restoration onwards, women poets were not neglected by reviewers, and many – More, Hemans, Adelaide Procter (reputedly Queen Victoria’s favourite poet), Ingelow – sold very well, while others – Barbauld, Barrett Browning – won considerable intellectual respect. However, pressures for respectability, sublimation and self-repression also flourished, with smothering and distorting effects (in three different ways, Hemans, Wordsworth, Rossetti). Political and intellectual developments associated with, for example, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mme de Staël and Rousseau, together with Romantic attitudes to Nature, the will and imagination, motivated and unsettled others (Barrett Browning, the Brontës) – the imagination and sexuality merging unnervingly. Many, of course, worked within Victorian values of optimism and good works (Procter, Ingelow, Greenwell – where a sublimated sexual energy is discernible); some indeed, effaced their female identities, almost subversively, behind male pseudonyms: Currer Bell, Michael Field, George Eliot. Nevertheless, as the century proceeds, a more independently feminine, and even feminist voice and sensibility become apparent. A repressive social orthodoxy provoked increasingly a melancholy, even morbid note in women’s verse (preceding, if later merging with, fin de siele sen timent); sometimes this is lost in the liberating energy of radical and suffragist movements (Guggenberger, Mathilde Blind, Meynell), sometimes, a deeper alienation is suggested (Levy, Coleridge).