Author: Evance, Susan (dates uncertain; fl. 1808-18)
Title: Poems . . . Selected from her Earliest Productions, to Those of the Present Year.
Date: 1808
Biographical Information
Little is known about Susan Evance, either about her public life or about her private affairs. Although a few hints exist, we are left for the most part uncertain about when she was born and when she died, to whom she was related, and who any of her friends and acquaintances were. The only things that we as readers, scholars, and simply interested parties have been able to determine over the years about her is that, according to internal evidence from her 1808 collection, Poems, . . . she seems to have had a brother in the navy, and that she also had sisters (whose names are uncertain). In addition, at some time between 1808 and 1818, she apparently married a man whose name was B. Hooper; on the title page of her 1818 poem commemorating the death in childbirth in late 1817 of Princess Charlotte Augusta (the Prince Regent’s daughter) her name appears as “Mrs. B. Hooper.” According to J. R. deJ. Jackson, she was a friend of Maria Barton (later Maria Hack), who was the author of many works for children and whose younger brother was the successful poet Bernard Barton. There is an unsubstantiated suggestion in the poem on Princess Charlotte that Evance may have had one or more children. Due to how private Evance appears to have been with her life, we are left largely to speculate on her life and circumstances. Evance’s connection with James Clarke, identified as the editor of her 1808 collection, is unclear, but it may be significant that among the three London printers of her 1818 poem on Princess Charlotte (Suttaby, Evance, and Fox) is one whose surname is the same as her unmarried name. Despite the appearance of several reviews of her 1808 collection soon after it was published, Evance’s poetry seems largely to have disappeared fairly quickly from general view relatively soon afterward.
Sources:
Behrendt, Stephen C. British Women Poets and the Romantic Writing Community. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
Feldman, Paula R, Ed. British Women Poets of the Romantic Era: An Anthology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
Knowles, Claire. Sensibility and Female Poetic Tradition, 1780-1860: The Legacy of Charlotte Smith. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.
Jackson, J. R. deJ. Romantic Poetry by Women: A Bibliography, 1770-1835. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.
Prepared by Samantha Stuefer, University of Nebraska, April 2018.
© Samantha Stuefer, 2018.