Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments How long this book has taken to research and write can be measured in the wonderful student assistants who have worked on it with me. Kim Snyder was the first, and she left a legacy of research notebooks and finding aids that never failed us. Melissa Roth became an expert on several poets, and her insights and lively advocacy for them improved the book. Jessica Smith Ellis, Jessie Jordan, Elizabeth Cater Childs, and Lynn Moody did super sleuthing. Heather Hicks and Sara Brown shared the drudgery for submission with the endless polishing of notes and bibliography, and Heather and Lacey Williams cheerfully survived all the way through page proofs. Day by day, these women were the smooth wheels that kept the work going, and they added humor and new learning experiences. I am especially grateful to Martine Watson Brownley, Penny Ingram, and Devoney Looser, who read portions of the book and made many helpful suggestions . Tina even offered riverboat and late-night consultations. When my commitment to the book’s largest purposes wavered, they, together with Hilary Wyss, Alicia Carroll, Joy Leighton, and members of my former NEH seminars, especially Anna Battigelli, Catherine Ingrassia, Kathryn King, and Paula McDowell, encouraged me to continue. Stuart Curran allowed me to use his copy of Charlotte Smith’s Conversations for an extended time, Miller Solomon shared his entire Robert Dodsley collection, and Dave Haney, Tim Dykstal, and Jim Hammersmith were patient, on-site reference sources. Nancy Noe truly made the Auburn University library work for me; perhaps no library in the world would have completely supported this project, and Nancy worked tirelessly and imaginatively to give me access to whatever eighteenth- and twenty-first-century items I needed. Susan Gubar by a chance remark she has probably forgotten played an important part in my decision to write this book: she reminded me how often in my career I have reconsidered and tested paradigms and how much pleasure and intellectual stimulation this has brought me. The anonymous Johns Hopkins University Press reader, who provided thoughtful reflections on organization and meticulous attention to detail, and the copyeditor, Joanne Allen, went x Acknowledgments far beyond the call of duty, and I am deeply grateful. I especially thank John Richetti, who challenged me to write the chapter on eighteenth-century women’s poetry for the Cambridge History of English Literature and often discussed it with me; this book is the child of that project and was helped indirectly but substantially by Linda Bree and Cambridge University Press readers. Several chapters are expanded and adapted from it, and I thank the press for permission to excerpt from my essay. As always, I am more grateful than I can express for my husband’s encouragement and his part in creating the happy space in which I work. ...