Who were the women poets of the eighteenth century? More than a hundred are represented in this anthology, yet only few have hitherto featured in conventional surveys and anthologies of eighteenth-century verse. Unlike the women who wrote fiction, the vast majority of those who wrote verse have been ignored and forgotten since their own day. Yet they speak with vigour and immediacy, in a range of moods from the resentful and melancholic to the humorous and
exuberant; about the world they lived in and their experience of life in town and country, of love and marriage. Nor were they all from one social class: as the biographical headnotes reveal, women at all
levels of society, washerwomen and duchesses, both wrote and found their way into print. Usually most at ease writing in informal and unpretentious verse, the women poets grew in confidence during the century, writing eventually in a great variety of poetic forms and on public as well as private topics. The writers in this wide-ranging and unpredictable anthology open a new perspective on their age, and provide the grounds for a reassessment of a neglected aspect of its literature.
Roger Lonsdale edited the New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse.
Industry Reviews
`not just a marvellous piece of scholarship but as richly entertaining and original a book as I have come across for some time. Out of the dust of the Bodleian Dr Lonsdale has resurrected more than a hundred witty women and set them glistening and pulsing with life and spirits before us; and through their fresh and often subversive eyes, the Augustan age seems much closer than it did ... Feminists will want to thank Lonsdale for restoring Mrs Browning's
poetic ancestors, but not feminists alone. Historians will find rich material, and so will the general reader prepared to browse and surrender to the many different idioms, rhythms and personalities
revealed here ... The book has more that one useful index, notes and an informative introduction.'
Claire Tomalin, The Independent
'This new anthology should disturb many literary preconceptions with its forceful and charming discoveries.'
Independent
'a delight to read ... The selections are carefully balanced ... This is a brilliant and original anthology and, despite its editor's occasional demurs, makes a major contribution to feminist literary studies.'
Julia Briggs, The Times
'not just a marvellous piece of scholarship but as richly entertaining and original a book as I have come across for some time'
Independent
'a revelation of talent, wit and anger from unknown writers who often seem more alive than our contemporaries'
Claire Tomalin, Observer
'Not only is there variety, there are also poets that this reviewer had never heard of, and there are discoveries.'
Malcolm Rutherford, Financial Times
`an unpredictable anthology which is hard to put down once you open it. Over 500 meaty pages revive a hundred or so women poets and poetic women, washerwomen, duchesses, obedient wives and wayward wenches, who have been lost to literature for 200 years. The useful and illuminating introduction gives an unusual variety of contemporary attitudes to women.' Oxford Today
'I was delighted by this collection'
Janet Barron, Literary Review
'Beguiling and entertaining anthology.'
The Observer
`This sparkling collection of more than 100 witty women in the great age of wit combines the well-known with the strangely neglected.' Independent on Sunday
'a rich array of neglected talent ... Dr Lonsdale's scholarship has uncovered a rich seam in our poetic inheritance'
Andrew Swarbrick, Oxford Times
'He has unearthed a rich array of neglected talent ... The volume as a whole affords more insight into the lives of eighteenth-century women than any number of historical surveys and Dr Lonsdale's scholarship has uncovered a rich seam in our poetic inheritance.'
Andrew Swarbrick, Oxford Times
'Lonsdale refrains from evaluative commentary, and uses his introduction instead to offer a highly informative and lucid account of the historical background to the poems. This, combined with his admirable biographical headnotes, and the additionally instructive endnotes, provides a substantial context in which to read the poems. That so much research and scholarship is presented so modestly is a further tribute to Lonsdale's achievement. He has here
produced another major anthology.'
Paul Clayton, Hertford College, Oxford, Notes & Queries,Vol.235, No.4, December 1990
'This year I discovered Roger Lonsdale's collection ... which I read with fascination and increasing joy'
Times Educational Supplement (1992)
