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Co-Winner, James Russell Lowell Prize, Modern Language Association This major study offers a broad view of the writing and careers of eighteenth-century women poets, casting new light on the ways in which poetry was read and enjoyed, on changing poetic tastes in British culture, and on the development of many major poetic genres and traditions. Rather than presenting a chronological survey, Paula R. Backscheider explores the forms in which women wrote and the uses to which they put those forms. Considering more than forty women in relation to canonical male writers of the same era, she concludes that women wrote in all of the genres that men did but often adapted, revised, and even created new poetic kinds from traditional forms.Backscheider demonstrates that knowledge of these women's poetry is necessary for an accurate and nuanced literary history. Within chapters on important canonical and popular verse forms, she gives particular attention to such topics as women's use of religious poetry to express candid ideas about patriarchy and rape; the continuing evolution and important role of the supposedly antiquarian genre of the friendship poetry; same-sex desire in elegy by women as well as by men; and the status of Charlotte Smith as a key figure of the long eighteenth century, not only as a Romantic-era poet.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Title Page, Copyright Page
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. vii-viii
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  1. Acknowledgments
  2. pp. ix-x
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  1. Abbreviations
  2. pp. xi-xii
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  1. Plan of the Book
  2. pp. xiii-xxx
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  1. Chapter One: Introduction
  2. pp. 1-27
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  1. Chapter Two: Anne Finch and What Women Wrote
  2. pp. 28-79
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  1. Chapter Three: Women and Poetry in the Public Eye
  2. pp. 80-122
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  1. Chapter Four: Hymns, Narratives, and Innovations in Religious Poetry
  2. pp. 123-174
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  1. Chapter Five: Friendship Poems
  2. pp. 175-232
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  1. Chapter Six: Retirement Poetry
  2. pp. 233-267
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  1. Chapter Seven: The Elegy
  2. pp. 268-315
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  1. Chapter Eight: The Sonnet, Charlotte Smith, and What Women Wrote
  2. pp. 316-375
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  1. Chapter Nine: Conclusion
  2. pp. 376-402
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  1. Biographies of the Poets
  2. pp. 403-412
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  1. Notes
  2. pp. 413-466
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  1. Bibliography
  2. pp. 467-498
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 499-514
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