Selective Bibliography Spring 2018

English 331:

British Women Poets of theRomantic Period

Stephen Behrendt
319 Andrews; 472-1806
office: 2:00 - 3:30 TR, 10:00 - 12:00 W
and by appointment
email Dr. Behrendt

A Selective Bibliography for Research and Study, lightly annotated (2018)

Selected Primary Materials

Aikin, Lucy. Epistles on Women, Exemplifying their Character and Condition in Various Ages and Nations, with Miscellaneous Poems. London: J. Johnson, 1810.
Baillie, Joanna (1762-1851). Poems: Wherein it is Attempted to Describe Certain Views of Nature and Rustic Manners. London: Joseph Johnson, 1790.
-----. Fugitive Verses. London: Edward Moxon, 1840. 408 pp.
-----. The Dramatic and Poetical Works. London: Longman, Brown and Green and Longmans, 1851. 847 pp.
Bannerman, Anne. Tales of Superstition and Chivalry. London: Vedrnor and Hood, 1802.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia [Aikin] (1743-1825). Eighteen Hundred and Eleven: A Poem. London: Joseph Johnson, 1812. 25 pp.; an interesting and compelling poem of social protest.
-----. The Works of Anna Letitia Barbauld. With a memoir by Lucy Aikin. 2 vols. London: Longman, Brown and Green and Longmans, 1825. The poetry is in Vol. 1. Her early publisher, beginning in 1773, was Joseph Johnson.
-----. The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld. Ed. William McCarthy and Elizabeth Kraft. Athens: U of Georgia, 1994. Well-annotated, definitive edition.
Bentley, Elizabeth (1767-1839). Ode on the Glorious Victory over the French and Spanish Fleets, on the 21st of October, 1805, and the Death of Lord Nelson. Norwich: Stevenson and Matchett, [1805].
-----. Poems: Being the Genuine Compositions of Elizabeth Bentley of Norwich. Norwich: Stevenson, Matchett and Stevenson, 1821.
Betham, [Mary] Matilda (1776-1852). Elegies and Other Small Poems. Ipswich: W. Burrell, 1797. 128 pp.
-----. Poems. London: J. Hatchard, 1808. 116 pp.
-----. Vignettes: in Verse. London: Rowland Hunter, 1818. 80 pp.
Candler, Ann. Poetical Attempts. Ipswich: John Raw, 1803. An especially interesting collection by a working-class woman poet.
Dodsworth, Anna Barrell (?-?). Fugitive Pieces. Canterbury: Simmons and Kirkly, 1802. 107 pp.
Grant, Anne [MacVicar] (1755-1838). Eighteen Hundred and Thirteen: A poem in Two Parts. Edinburgh: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1814. 146 pp.
-----. The Highlanders, and Other Poems. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1802; 2nd ed. 1808. 300 pp.
-----. Poems on Various Subjects. Edinburgh: Longman and Rees, 1803. 447 pp.
Hands, Elizabeth (17??-17??). The Death of Amnon: A Poem with an Appendix: Containing Pastorals and Other Poetical Pieces. Coventry: N. Rollason, 1789. 127 pp.
Hanson, Martha. Sonnets, and Other Poems. 2 vols. London: Mawman, 1809. A large collection of sonnets by a little-known poet.
Hemans, Felicia [Browne] (1793-1835). The Domestic Affections, and Other Poems. London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1812. 172 pp.
-----. The Forest Sanctuary, and Other Poems. London: J. Murray, 1825. 205 pp.
-----. Modern Greece. A Poem. London: John Murray, 1817. 67 pp.
-----. Records of Woman: with Other Poems. London: T. Cadell, 1828. 320 pp.
-----. The Works of Mrs. Hemans, with a Memoir of Her Life. 7 vols. Edinburgh: Blackwood and Sons / London: Thomas Cadell, 1839.
-----. The Poetical Works of Mrs. Felicia Hemans. Ed. W. M. Rossetti. London: Ward, Lock and Co., 1870.
-----. Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Letters, Reception Materials. Ed. Susan J. Wolfson. Princeton: Priceton UP, 2001. A superb edition that sets the standard for Hemans editorial scholarship.
Hunter, Anne [Home] (1742-1821). Poems. London: T. Payne, 1802. 122 pp.; 2nd ed., 1803.
Landon, Letitia Elizabeth (1802-1838). The Golden Violet, with its Tales of Romance and Chivalry; and Other Poems. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1827. 310 pp.
-----. The Improvisatrice, and Other Poems by L. E. L. London: Hurst, Robinson, 1824. 327 pp.
-----. Poetical Works. 2 vols. London: Longman, Brown and Green and Longmans, 1853.
-----. Letitia Elizabeth Landon: Selected Writings. Ed. Jerome McGann and Daniel Riess. Peterborough, ONT: Broadview, 1997. A useful introductory selection of Landon’s virtuoso writings.
Leigh, Helen (17??-17??). Miscellaneous Poetry. Manchester: C. Wheeler, 1788. 32 pp.
Milne, Christian [Ross] (1773-?). Simple Poems on Simple Subjects, by Christian Milne, Wife of a Journeyman Ship Carpenter, in Footdee, Aberdeen. Aberdeen: J. Chalmers and Co., 1805.
Moody, Elizabeth [Greenly] (17??-17??). Anna’s Complaint; or, The Miseries of War. Contained in War: A System of Madness, ed. by “Humanitas” [George Miller]. Edinburgh, 1796. A good example of the considerable contributions by women poets to anti-war literature during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods.
-----. Poetic Trifles. London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1798. 186 pp.
Mathews, Eliza Kirkham [Strong] (17??-1802). Poems. Doncaster: W. Sheardown, 1802. 115 pp.
Mitford, Mary Russell (1787-1855). Dramatic Scenes, Sonnets, and Other Poems. London: George B. Whittaker, 1827. 392 pp.
-----. Narrative Poems on the Female Character, in the Various Relations of Life. “Volume I.” London: Eastburn, Kirk and Co., 1813. 206 pp.; no subsequent volumes published.
-----. Poems. “Second edition, with considerable additions.” London: F. C. and J. Rivington, 1811. 257 pp.; first edition, in 144 pages, was published in 1810.
More, Hannah (1745-1833). Poems. London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1816.
Nairne, Lady; Carolina [Oliphant] (1766-1845). Life and Songs of the Baroness Nairne. Ed. Rev. Charles Rogers. 2nd ed. London: Charles Griffin and Co. 1869. 206 pp.
Opie, Amelia [Alderson] (1769-1853). The Father and Daughter. A Tale, In Prose: with an Epistle from the Maid of Corinth to Her Lover, and Other Poetical Pieces. London: Davis, Wilks, and Taylor / Longman and Rees, 1801. 244 pp.
-----. Poems. London: T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1802. 192 pp.
-----. The Warrior’s Return, and Other Poems. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808. 185 pp.
Richardson, Charlotte Caroline [Smith] (1775-1850?). Poems Written on Different Occasions. York: T. Wilson and R. Spence, 1806. 127 pp.
-----. Harvest, A Poem in Two Parts, with Other Poetical Pieces. London: Sherwood, Neely and Jones, 1818. 112 pp.
-----. Waterloo. A Poem . . . to which is added, Truth, A Vision. London: [n. p.], 1815.
Robinson, Mary [Darby] (1758-1800): pseudonyms include Juvenal, Horace, Horace Juvenal, Laura, Laura Maria, Oberon, Perdita. Lyrical Tales. London: T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1800. 218 pp.
-----. Poems. 2 vols. London: J. Bell, 1791-93. Includes many of the poems Robinson published in The Oracle under a variety of pseudonyms.
-----. Poetical Works. 3 vols. London: Richard Phillips, 1806. Edited by her daughter, Mary Elizabeth Robinson.
-----. Sappho and Phaon. In A Series of Legitimate Sonnets; with Thoughts on Poetic Subjects, and Anecdotes of the Grecian Goddess. Hookham and Carpenter, 1796. 82 pp.
-----. Mary Robinson: Selected Poems. Ed. Judith Pascoe. Peterborough, ONT: Broadview, 2000. An exemplary modern edition, with good notes and contextual materials.
Seward, Anna (1742-1809), “The Swan of Lichfield.” The Poetical Works of Anna Seward, with Extracts from Her Literary Correspondence. Ed. Sir Walter Scott. 3 vols. Edinburgh: Ballantyne and Co. / London: Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1810.
Smallpiece, Anna Maria. Original Sonnets, and Other Small Poems. London: J. Johnson, 1805. The sonnets are a remarkable variation on the traditional sonnet sequence.
Online edition, ed. Stephen Behrendt: Anna Maria Smallpiece, Original Sonnets, and Other Small Poems. An electronic edition; http://www.unl.edu/Corvey/html/Etexts/SmallpieceAM/SmallpieceIndex.htm
Smith, Charlotte [Turner] 1749-1806. Beachy Head, with Other Poems. London: J. Johnson, 1807. 219 pp.
-----. Elegiac Sonnets. London: T. Cadell, 1784. By 1797 the collection had grown to two volumes and was in its fifth edition.
-----. The Emigrants, a Poem in Two Books. London: T. Cadell, 1793. 68 pp.; on the situation of French emigrants displaced by the Revolution.
-----. The Poems of Charlotte Smith. Ed. Stuart Curran. London: Oxford UP, 1993. The definitive collected edition, though with limited editorial notes and apparatus.
Southey, Caroline Bowles (1786-1854). Ellen Fitzarthur. A Metrical Tale. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1820. 134 pp.
-----. Tales of the Factories. London: W. Blackwood, 1833. 85 pp.
-----. The Poetical Works. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1867. 304 pp.
Taylor, Jane (1783-1824). Essays in Rhyme on Morals and Manners. 5th ed. London: Houlston and Co., 1840.
-----. Prose and Poetry. Intro. F. V. Barry. London: Humphrey Milford, 1925.
Taylor, Jane and Ann. Original Poems for Infant Minds. London: Hall and Co., 1804.
Tighe, Mary Blachford (Mrs. Henry Tighe) (1772-1810). Psyche: or, The Legend of Love. London: James Carpenter, 1795, 1805. 214 pp.
-----. Psyche, with Other Poems. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1811. 314 pp.
-----. The Collected Poems and Journals of Mary Tighe. Ed. Harriet Kramer Linkin. Lexington: U P of Kentucky, 2005. A brilliant edition, with splendid background materials and commentary.
-----. The Collected Poetry of Mary Tighe. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Brian C. Cooney. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2016. Another fine edition, with excellent notes and critical commentary.
Williams, Helen Maria (1762-1827). A Poem on the Bill lately passed for regulating the Slave Trade. London: T. Cadell, 1791. 23 pp.
-----. Poems. 2 vols. London: T. Cadell, 1786. second edition, 1791.
-----. Poems on Various Subjects. London: G. and W. B. Whittaker, 1823. 298 pp.
Wordsworth, Dorothy. The Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. Ed. Mary Moorman. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971. For the complete extant poems of Dorothy Wordsworth, see Susan M. Levin. Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1987.
Yearsley, Ann Cromartie (1752-1806); pseudonym: Lactilla. A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave Trade. London: G. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1788. 30 pp.
-----. Poems on Various Subjects. London: G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1787. 168 pp.
-----. The Rural Lyre. London: G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1796. 142 pp.

Important Online Archives

Behrendt, Stephen C., ed. Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2008. Electronic textbase of some 90 volumes by 55 Irish women poets publishing between 1770 and 1835, with new introductory bio-critical essays on each author.
http://0-lit.alexanderstreet.com.library.unl.edu/iwrp
Behrendt, Stephen C. and Nancy J. Kushigian, eds. Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2002. Electronic textbase of complete volumes of poetry by scottish women writers, 1780-1835, with searchable texts and new scholarly introductions to the authors.
http://0-lit.alexanderstreet.com.library.unl.edu/swrp
European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection.
http://0-gdc.galegroup.com.library.unl.edu/gdc/ncco?p=NCCO&u=linc74325
A collection of more than 72,000 volumes in English, German and French, many of which are collections of poetry. See separate bibliography, “Corvey Women Poets,” for details of authors and works.

Selected Secondary Materials

Bibliographical and Reference Materials:

Alston, R. C. A Checklist of Women Writers, 1801-1900: Fiction, Verse, Drama. London: British Library, 1990.
Andrew Ashfield, ed. Romantic Women Poets, 1770-1838: An Anthology. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1995. An excellent paperback anthology, with extensive selections from a wide range of poets and excellent brief introductions and annotations. Distributed in the U. S. by St. Martin’s Press, New York.
Behrendt, Stephen C., ed. Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2008. Electronic textbase of some 90 volumes by 55 Irish women poets publishing between 1770 and 1835, with new introductory bio-critical essays on each author.
Behrendt, Stephen C. and Nancy J. Kushigian, eds. Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Press, 2002. Electronic textbase of complete volumes of poetry by scottish women writers, 1780-1835, with searchable texts and new scholarly introductions to the authors.
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, eds. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. London: B. T. Batsford, 1990. A tremendous resource for biographical and critical-reception information. Very extensive entries, well researched and well presented. The starting-place for any research on women writers.
Breen, Jennifer, ed. Women Romantic Poets, 1785-1832: An Anthology. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1992. Useful paperback anthology, with good biographical sketches of the authors. Not carefully proofread, however, even in its second edition (1994); best to check texts against originals or more authoritative sources.
Davis, Gwenn, and Beverly A. Joyce, eds. Poetry By Women to 1900: A Bibliography of American and British Writers. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1991. 340 pages, with index and appendices. An excellent reference, carefully prepared.
Feldman, Paula, ed. British Women Poets of the Romantic Era. Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. The most extensive and detailed modern anthology, with excellent, detailed notes and introductory materials. Now available also in paperback format.
Jackson, J. R. de J. Annals of English Verse, 1770-1835: A Preliminary Survey of the Volumes Published. New York: Garland, 1985. A remarkable resource, this volume supplies bibliographic listings, on a year-by-year basis, of virtually all volumes of poetry published in the British Isles during this 55-year period.
-----. Romantic Poetry by Women: A Bibliography, 1770-1835. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1993. An enormously important bibliographical tool, itemizing in historical and bibliographical context all books of poetry by women during the period. Absolutely invaluable.
Nathan, Rhoda B., ed. Nineteenth-Century Women Writers of the English-Speaking World. New York: Greenwood, 1986.
Sullivan, Alvin, ed. British Literary Magazine: The Romantic Age, 1789-1836. Wesport, CT: Greenwood P, 1983. Part of a four-volume survey of British Literary Periodicals containing critical essays on every literary periodicalof the period. Essays cover political and idiological affiliations, editorial policies, publication history, and full bibliographical information. Absolutely essential for historical research!
Todd, Janet, ed. A Dictionary of British and American Women Writers: 1660-1800. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1984. Excellent source for earlier writers. Very well done.
-----. A Dictionary of Women Writers. London: Routledge, 1989.
Ward, William S. Literary Reviews in British Periodicals 1798-1820: A Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1972. Part of a four-volume project that lists virtually all literary reviews of British authors during the Romantic period. Arranged alphabetically. Absolutely essential for historical research!
Wu, Duncan, ed. Romantic Women Poets, An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997. A very well done and extensive paperback anthology. Good range of poets and judiciously selected texts.

Some Notable “Historical” Materials (notice the dates)

Betham, Mary Matilda. A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country. London: B. Crosby and Co., 1804.
Dyce, Alexander. Specimens of British Poetesses. London: T. Rodd, 1827.
Hale, Sarah Josepha. Woman’s Record; or, Sketches of All Distinguished Women, from Creation to AD 1854. 1855. Rpt. New York: Source Book P, 1970.
Hays, Mary. Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. Modern edition edited by Gina Luria [New York: Garland Press, 1974].
-----. Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women of All Ages and Countries. 6 vols. London: R. Philips, 1803.
Knapp, Samuel L. Female Biography: Containing Notices of Distinguished Women, In Different Nations and Ages. New York: J. Carpenter, 1834.
Lockhart, J[ohn]. G. “Modern English Poetesses,” Quarterly Review, 66 (September 1840): 374-418. Long, detailed “passage-review”; an early appreciation that is a classic in its own way. Especially revealing about the ways in which women poets and their work were discussed immediately after the Romantic period by a critic who was a contemporary of the Byron generation.
Robertson, Eric S. English Poetesses: A Series of Critical Biographies, with Illustrative Extracts. London: Cassell, 1883.
Rowton, Frederic. The Female Poets of Great Britain. London: Longman, 1850. reprinted in facsimile by Wayne State UP, Detroit, with an introduction by Marilyn L. Williamson, in 1981. This extraordinary anthology by a relatively well-meaning liberal publisher and editor in many ways epitomizes how Victorian canon-makers could simultaneously praise women’s writing and damn it by deliberately misrepresenting it or by manipulating both reader expectations and the general cultural attitude toward the literary woman. Anthologies of this sort are perhaps the most instructive sort of “secondary primary works” modern cultural scholarship has available.
Thompson, William. Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Retain Them in Political, and Thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery. London: Longman, 1825. It’s worth recalling that women associated themselves in the later eighteenth century with the abolitionist movement, seeing in the plight of the [African] slaves an analogy to their own situations.
Williams, Jane. The Literary Women of England. London: Saunders and Otley, 1861.

Selected Modern Critical Studies:

Adburgham, Alison. Women in Print: Writing Women and Women’s Magazines from the Restoration to the Accession of Victoria. London: Allen and Unwin, 1972.
Agress, Lynne. The Feminine Irony: Women on Women in Early Nineteenth-Century English Literature. Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1978.
Armstrong, Isobel. “The Gush of the Feminine: How Can We Read Women’s Poetry of the Romantic Period?” Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices. Ed. Feldman and Kelley. 13-32.
Backscheider, Paula R. Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2005. Perhaps the finest study to date of 18th-century British women poets; comprehensive, readable, and thoroughly engaging.
Batchelor, Jennie, and Cora Kaplan, eds. British Women’s Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century: Authorship, Politics and History. Houndsmills: Palgrave, 2005. An excellent collection, with good essays on later 18th-century and Romantic-era writers in all genres.
Behrendt, Stephen C. “‘A few harmless Numbers’: British women poets and the climate of war, 1793-1815.” Romantic Wars: Studies in Culture and Conflict, 1793-1815. Ed. Philip Shaw. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. 13-36. Examines the primarily anti-war poetry of women writers within a historical context.
-----. “British Women Poets and the Reverberations of Radicalism in the 1790s,” in Romanticism, Radicalism, and the Press, ed. Stephen C. Behrendt. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1997, pp. 83-102.
-----. British Women Poets and the Romantic Writing Community. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2009. A wide-ranging survey of English Scottish and Irish women poets, their themes, genres, and poetic forms.
-----. “‘Certainly not a Female Pen’: Felicia Hemans’s Early Public Reception.” Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Nanora Sweet and Julie Melnyk. London: Palgrave, 2001. 95-114.
-----. “Charlotte Smith, Women Poets, and the Culture of Celebrity.” Charlotte Smith in British Romanticism. Ed. Jacqueline Labbé. London: Pickering and Chatto (2008). 189-202, 251-53.
-----. “Influence, Anxiety, and Erasure in Women’s Writing: Romantic becomes Victorian.” The History of British Women’s Writing, 1750-1830. Volume Five. Ed. Jacqueline Labbé. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; 321-40.
-----. “In Search of Anna Maria Smallpiece.” Women’s Writing 7.1 (1999): 55-73. A combination of literary detective work and textual analysis focusing on an excellent but obscure poet.
-----. “Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period: A Different Sort of Other,” Women’s Writing 12.2 (2005): 153-75; special issue on 19th-century women poets.
-----. “Poetry.” The Cambridge Companion to Women’s Writing in the Romantic Period. Ed. Devoney Looser. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2015. 1-15.
-----. “Telling Secrets: The Sonnets of Anna Maria Smallpiece and Mary F. Johnson,” special issue on the Romantic sonnet, edited by Daniel Robinson; European Romantic Review 13 (December 2002):393-410.
-----. “The Gap That Is Not a Gap: British Poetry by Women, 1802-1812,” in Romanticism and Women Poets, ed. Linkin and Behrendt (see below), pp. 25-45.
-----., and Harriet Kramer Linkin, eds. Approaches to Teaching British Women Poets of the Romantic Period. New York: MLA, 1997. A collection of pedagogically-oriented essays by scholar-teachers concerning ways of teaching individual and grouped women poets in a variety of curricular and institutional settings.
Butler, Marilyn. Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries: English Literature and Its Background. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981. An extremely useful, balanced account of the unexpectedly diverse and dynamic cultural milieu in which Romantic writers worked.
Cox, Philip. Gender, Genre, and the Romantic Poets. Manchester, Manchester UP, 1996. An excellent, readable study informed by careful reading and by deconstructive theory.
Craciun, Adriana, and Kari E. Lokke, eds. Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution. Albany: State U of New York P, 2001. Excellent collection of essays that reveal the considerable political and intellectual presence of British women writers in public debate over the French Revolution.
Curran, Stuart. Poetic Form and British Romanticism. New York: Oxford UP, 1986. Extremely important reassessment of the Romantic poets’ renovation of traditional forms and genres.
-----. “Romantic Poetry: The I Altered,” in Romanticism and Feminism, ed. Anne K. Mellor (see below), pp. 185-207.
-----. “Mary Robinson’s Lyrical Tales in Context.” Re-Visioning Romanticism. Ed. Wilson and Haefner. 17-35.
-----. “Women Readers, Women Writers.” The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism. Ed. Stuart Curran. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. 177-95. Extremely useful.
Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.
Delamont, Sara, and Lona Duffin. The Nineteenth-Century Woman: Her Cultural and Physical World. London: Croom Helm, 1978.
Eberle, Roxanne. “‘Tales of Truth?”: Amelia Opie’s Antislavery Politics,” in Romanticism and Women Poets, ed. Linkin and Behrendt, pp. 71-98.
Ellison, Julie. Delicate Subjects: Romanticism, Gender, and the Ethics of Understanding. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990.
Ezell, Margaret J. M. Writing Women’s Literary History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993. Although its primary focus is on earlier materials, this excellent book is theoretically and ideologically important for considerations of women’s literary traditions generally.
Favret, Mary A. and Nicola Watson, eds. At the Limits of Romanticism: Essays in Cultural, Feminist, and Materialist Criticism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994. Wide range of material, not limited to poetry.
Fay, Elizabeth A. A Feminist Introduction to Romanticism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. Along with the book-length studies by Anne K. Mellor and Susan Wolfson included in this bibliography, this is a “foundational” examination of feminism in – and in relation to – British Romanticism.
Feldman, Paula R. “The Poet and the Profits: Felicia Hemans and the Literary Marketplace.” Keats-Shelley Journal 46 (1997): 148-76.
-----., and Theresa Kelley. Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices. Hanover, NH: UP of New England, 1995. Important collection of critical essays.
George, M. Dorothy. London Life in the Eighteenth Century. London: Kegan, Paul and Trench, 1925. Don’t be fooled by the date; this is still a lively, readable, and thoroughly knowledgeable book by a brilliant cultural historian. Especially useful for getting a sense of day-to-day city life in England’s most extraordinary urban center.
Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979. Landmark study; absolutely indispensable for any serious study of women writers of the period.
-----, eds. Shakespeare’s Sister: Feminist Essays on Women Poets. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1979. More broad in scope, and by diverse hands, but full of important insights.
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1982.
Haefner, Joel. “(De)Forming the Romantic Canon: The Case of Women Writers.” College Literature 20:2 (1993): 44-57.
Harding, Anthony John. “Felicia Hemans and the Effacement of Woman.” Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices. Ed. Feldman and Kelley. 138-49.
Haworth, Helen E. “‘A Milk-White Lamb That Bleats’? Some Stereotypes of Women in Romantic Literature,” Humanities Association Review, 24 (1973): 277-93.
Hickok, Kathleen. Representations of Women: Nineteenth-Century British Women’s Poetry. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984. Categorized study of images of women from women’s poetry (chapters on images of daughters, wives, mothers, “the fallen woman,” “the spinster,” working women, and “the New Woman,” with additional chapters on E. B. Browning and Christina Rossetti). A useful survey.
Hoeveler, Diane Long. Romantic Androgyny: The Women Within. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 1990.
Hofkosh, Sonia. “A Woman’s Profession: Sexual Difference and the Romance of Authorship.” Studies in Romanticism 32 (1993): 245-72.
. Homans, Margaret. Women Writers and Poetic Identity: Dorothy Wordsworth, Emily Brontë, and Emily Dickinson. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980.
-----. Bearing the Word: Language and Female Experience in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986. Very important, especially for feminist linguistic approaches.
Janeway, Elizabeth. Man’s World, Woman’s Place: A Study in Social Mythology. New York: William Morrow, 1971.
Kelly, Gary. Women, Writing and Revolution, 1790-1827. New York: Oxford UP, 1993.
Kennedy, Deborah. “Benevolent Historian: Helen Maria Williams and Her British Readers,” in Rebellious Hearts, ed. Craciun and Lokke, pp. 317-36.
Klancher, Jon. The Making of English Reading Audiences, 1789-1832. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1987. A useful Marxist-informed (hence its title) study of the demographics of Romantic reading audiences; for women writers and readers, see also Curran, “Women Readers, Women Writers” (above).
Knowles, Claire. Sensibility and Female Poetic Tradition: The Legacy of Charlotte Smith. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. A fine study of the influence of Charlotte Smith on women poets, especially on Susan Evance, Letitia Elizabeth Landon and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Landry, Donna. The Muses of Resistance: Labouring Class Women’s Poetry in Britain, 1739-1796. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. An interesting view of an important early vehicle for women’s writing, and one traditionally overlooked by more “mainstream” literary history, whether feminist or not.
Labbe, Jacqueline. Writing Romanticism: Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, 1784-1807. New York: Palgrave, 2011,
Lane, Maggie. Literary Daughters. London: Robert Hale, 1989.
Lau, Beth, ed. Fellow Romantics: Male and Female British Writers, 1790-1835. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Good study of pairs of Romantic-era authors to consider parallels, intersections and connections in their lives, works, and socio-cultural milieus.
Leighton, Angela. Victorian Women Poets: Writing Against the Heart. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 1992. Although the primary focus is on Victorian writers, there is much here of importance to the Romantic scene.
Levin, Susan. Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1987. Listed here because it implications extend beyond Dorothy Wordsworth to the experience of the woman writer generally.
-----. “Romantic Prose and Feminine Romanticism,” Prose Studies 10 (1987): 181-95.
Linkin, Harriet Kramer. “Recuperating Romanticism in Mary Tighe’s Psyche,” in Romanticism and Women Poets, ed. Linkin and Behrendt, pp. 144-62.
-----. “Romantic Aesthetics in Mary Tighe and Letitia Landon: How Women Poets Recuperate the Gaze,” European Romantic Review 7 (1997): 159-88.
-----. “Taking Stock of the British Romantics Marketplace: Teaching New Canons through New Editions.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts (1995).
-----. The Collected Poems and Journals of Mary Tighe. Ed. Harriet Kramer Linkin. Lexington: U P of Kentucky, 2005. A brilliant edition, with splendid background materials and commentary.
-----, and Stephen C. Behrendt, eds. Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1999. Wide-ranging collection of essays on the reception and influence of British women poets of the Romantic period. Extensive bibliography.
Lokke, Kari E. “‘The Mild Dominion of the Moon’: Charlotte Smith and the Politics of Transcendence,” in Rebellious Hearts, ed. Craciun and Lokke, pp. 85-106.
Lootens, Tricia. “Receiving the Legend, Rethinking the Writer: Letitia Landon and the Poetess Tradition,” in Romanticism and Women Poets, ed. Linkin and Behrendt, pp. 242-59.
Luther, Susan. “A Stranger Minstrel: Coleridge’s Mrs. Robinson.” Studies in Romanticism 33 (1994): 391-409.
McCarthy, William. “A ‘High-Minded Christian Lady’: The Posthumous Reception of Anna Letitia Barbauld,” in Romanticism and Women Poets, ed. Linkin and Behrendt, pp. 165-91.
McGann, Jerome J. “Literary History, Romanticism, and Felicia Hemans.” Modern Language Quarterly 54 (1993): 215-35.
Mellor, Anne K., ed. Romanticism and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988. Excellent collection of essays by diverse authors. see especially the essays by Mellor, Sonia Hofkosh, Stuart Curran, and Susan Wolfson.
-----. Romanticism and Gender. New York: Routledge, 1993. An extremely important and wide-ranging, if controversial, study.
-----. “A Criticism of their Own: Romantic Women Literary Critics,” in Questioning Romanticism, ed. John Beer. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995, pp. 29-48.
-----. “The Female Poet and the Poetess: Two Traditions of British Women’s Poetry, 1780-1830. Studies in Romanticism 36, no. 2 (1997): 261-76.
Miskolcze, Robin. “Snapshots of Contradiction in Mary Robinson’s Poetical Works.” Papers on Language and Literature 31 (1995): 206-20.
Montefiore, Jan. Feminism and Poetry: Language, Experience, Identity in Women’s Writing. London: Pandora [Routledge], 1987. Broader in focus than simply the Romantic period.
Morrison, Lucy. “Effusive Elegies or Catty Critic: Letitia Elizabeth Landon on Felicia Hemans.” Romanticism on the Net 45 (February 2007): http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2007/v/n45/015820ar.html. Brilliant examination of the dynamics of the women’s writing community in later Romantic-era Britain.
Myers, Sylvia Haverstock. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991. Almost certainly the best – and surely the fullest – study of the significance of the Bluestockings on literature and culture in later eighteenth-century England. Very important.
Pascoe, Judith. “Mary Robinson and the Literary Marketplace.” Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices. Ed. Feldman and Kelley. 252-68.
Price, Fiona. Revolutions in Taste, 1773-1818: Women Writers and the Aesthetics of Romanticism. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Excellent examination of how the changes in the aesthetics of “taste” that were influenced by women writers (in all genres) were also profoundly socal and political both in nature and in their cultural consequences.
Richardson, Alan. Literature, Education, and Romanticism: Reading as Social Practice, 1780-1832. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. Another useful study of readers and reading practices in the period.
Rivers, Isabel, ed. Books and their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England. Leicester: Leicester UP, 1982.
Rogers, Katherine. Feminism in Eighteenth-Century England. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1982.
Ross, Marlon. The Contours of Masculine Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of Women’s Poetry. New York: Oxford UP, 1990. In its own way a groundbreaking book examining the rise of what Ross regards as a distinctive “woman’s voice”--and consequently a definable woman’s poetic tradition--in the Romantic period. No study of Romantic women’s writing can afford to neglect Ross, even where his work is proving controversial.
Schor, Naomi. Reading in Detail: Aesthetics and the Feminine. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Shevelow, Kathryn. Women and Print Culture: Constructing Femininity in the Early Periodical. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Showalter, Elaine. The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory. New York: Pantheon, 1985. While not strictly about Romantic writers, the essays in this collection are of great value to an appreciation of some of the larger cultural and critical issues involved in the creation of--and the assessment of--women’s writing.
Spender, Dale. Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them, from Aphra Behn to Adrienne Rich. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982.
Stephenson, Glennis. Letitia Landon: The Woman behind L. E. L. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1995. Major critical biography that begins to disentangle Landon the sophisticated artist and editor from the “L.E.L.” of popular mythology.
-----. “Letitia Landon and the Victorian Improvisatrice: The Construction of L. L. L.” Victorian Poetry 30 (1992): 1-17.
-----. “Poet Construction: Mrs. Hemans, L. E. L., and the Image of the Nineteenth-Century Woman Poet.” ReImagining Women: Representations of Women in Culture. Ed. Shirley Neuman and Glennis Stephenson. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1993. 61-73.
Tayler, Irene, and Gina Luria. “Gender and Genre: Women in British Romantic Literature,” What Manner of Woman: Essays on English and American Life and Literature. Ed. Marlene Springer. New York: New York UP, 1977.
Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Victor Gollancz, 1963. An extremely important Marxist study of the topic the title suggests, and one that examines in an enlightened fashion the role actually played in working class society by women.
Todd, Janet. Gender and Literary Voice. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1980.
-----. The Sign of Angelica: Women, Writing and Fiction, 1660-1800. London: Virago, 1989. Most concerned with prose fiction, but relevant nevertheless in its general observations.
Turner, Cheryl. Living by the Pen: Women Writers in the Eighteenth Century. London: Routledge, 1992. Concerned primarily with fiction, and running only to about 1796, this excellent study nevertheless usefully examines the cultural and economic conditions under which women wrote for profit.
Ty, Eleanor. Unsex’d Revolutionaries: Five Women Novelists of the 1790s. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1993. Includes Helen Maria Williams and Charlotte Smith, both of whom were also important poets, and examines the ways they and Mary Hays, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Elizabeth Inchbald politicized the domestic or sentimental novel.
Wake, Ann Frank. “Indirect Dissent: ‘Landscaping’ Female Agency in Amelia Alderson Opie’s Poems of the 1790s,” in Rebellious Hearts, ed. Craciun and Lokke, pp. 261-89.
Waters, Mary A. British Women Writers and the Profession of Literary Criticism, 1789-1832.Houndsmills: Palgrave, 2004. The first systematic study of Romantic-era women’s activities as professional literary critics.
Wilson, Carol Shiner, and Joel Haefner, eds. Re-Visioning Romanticism: British Women Writers, 1776-1837. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1994. An important and still timely collection of essays.
Wolfson, Susan J. “‘Domestic Affections’ and ‘the spear of Minerva’: Felicia Hemans and the Dilemma of Gender.” Re-Visioning Romanticism: British Women Writers, 1776-1837. Ed. Wilson and Haefner. 128-66.
-----. “Felicia Hemans and the Revolving Doors of Reception,” in Romanticism and Women Poets, ed. Linkin and Behrendt, pp. 214-41.
-----. Borderlines: The Shiftings of Gender in British Romanticism. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2006. An excellent study of gender issues, in the lives and works of male and female Romantic-era writers.
-----. Romantic Interactions: Social Being and the Turns of Literary Action. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2010.
Yaeger, Patricia. Honey-Mad Women: Emancipatory Strategies in Women’s Writing. New York: Columbia UP, 1988.