Women Romantic Poets 1785-1832: An Anthology

The Romantic period usually brings to mind names like Shelley and Byron, but alongside them many women published poetry, only to be neglected by the critics and compilers of later ages. None of the writers included here is a household name, yet their work has survived and in this broad anthology reveals itself in its diversity and originality -- from well-to-do intellectuals, such as Hannah More and Anne Hunter, to Ann Yearsley, a former dairymaid, and Charlotte Richardson, a cook and housemaid. In their depiction of Nature and in their adoption of domestic life as a fitting subject for poetry, Joanna Ballie's pre-Wordsworthian plea for an everyday language found its everyday subject.