''Poems by Eminent Ladies'' (1755) is one of the first

anthologies In book publishing Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed work ...

of women's writing in English. It was edited by George Colman (1732–1794) and

Bonnell Thornton Bonnell Thornton (1725–1768) was an English poet, essayist, and critic. He was educated at Westminster School, and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1747. In 1752 Thornton founded the ''Drury Lane Journal'', a satirical periodi ...

(1725–1768).

The first edition

The first edition comprises works by eighteen poets born between 1623 and 1722. Roughly half the pieces were written in the late seventeenth century, and the rest in the first half of the eighteenth. The poems are arranged alphabetically by author, an innovative format, for while both collections and collective biographies were popular, "the conflation of verse miscellany and encyclopedia or memoir was almost unheard of". Chantal Lavoie has described this anthology as "the first attempt to determine and justify a canon of women's writings". and notes that Colman and Thornton were friends to John Duncombe, author of '' The Feminiad'' (1754), a poetic celebration of women writers.

The second edition

Colman, as surviving partner, published a considerably expanded edition in 1785, in partial response, it has been conjectured, to the absence of women writers in

Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...

's extensive ''

Lives of the Poets ''Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets'' (1779–81), alternatively known by the shorter title ''Lives of the Poets'', is a work by Samuel Johnson comprising short biographies and critical appraisals of 52 poets, most of whom lived during th ...

'' (1779–81). This new edition includes a greater number of poets while offering fewer texts per poet. All the newly added writers produced their work in the mid- to late-eighteenth century, some of them years after the first edition was published.

Significance and context

The poets represented in ''Poems by Eminent Ladies'' are diverse in terms of literary reputation and degree of critical and commercial success, literary school or style, and social, economic, and cultural background. Together, they help the editors make a case for including women writers in the national literary tradition: "The Ladies, whose pieces we have here collected, are not only an honour to their sex, but to their country." ''Poems by Eminent Ladies'' was only the first of "multiple attempts to promote and anthologize women writers as important members of the national literary tradition,"Kucich, Greg. “Gendering the Canons of Romanticism: Past and Present.” ''The Wordsworth Circle'', vol. 27, no. 2, 1996, pp. 95–102. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24042631. Accessed 24 Jun. 2022. part of what scholar Moira Ferguson calls an "eruption of female panegyrics," mainly by men, that includes George Ballard's ''Memoirs of British Ladies'' (biographies of sixty-five notable women; 1752); Theophilus Cibber's ''Lives of the Poets'' (1753); Thomas Amory's ''Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain'' (1755); and ''Biographium faemineum: the female worthies, or, Memoirs of the most illustrious ladies, of all ages and nations, who have been eminently distinguished for their magnanimity, learning, genius, virtue, piety, and other excellent endowments. London: Printed for S. Crowder, 1766. 2 vols.'' (Anon; 1766).Ferguson, Moira. "'The cause of my sex': Mary Scott and the female literary tradition." ''Huntington Library Quarterly'' 50.4 (Autumn 1987), p. 359.

Poets

Writers included in the 1st (1755) edition

Writers added to the 1780 edition

Etexts

*Colman, George, the Elder, and Bonnell Thornton, eds. ''Poems by Eminent Ladies''. London: R. Baldwin, 1755.
Extext of Vol. II
HathiTrust) *''Poems by the most eminent ladies of Great Britain and Ireland. Re-published from the collection of G. Colman and B. Thornton, Esqrs., with considerable alterations, additions, and improvements''. London: W. Stafford, 1785.
Etext
Internet Archive)

Notes and references

Notes

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References

*Lavoie, Chantel Michelle. ''Poems by Eminent Ladies: A study of an eighteenth-century anthology'' (thesis). Toronto: University of Toronto, 1999. ISBN 9780612498839, 0612498832
PDF
*Lonsdale, Roger
Introduction
to the 2006 edition of Johnson's "Lives" (Clarendon Press)

External links

* Open Librar
OL16974856M

Worldcat
British anthologies Poetry anthologies by nationality Literature by women 19th-century books