The Poetry of Mary Robinson Form and Fame [Hardcover]

Once celebrated as 'the English Sappho,' Mary Robinson was a major figure in British Romanticism. This volume offers comprehensive study of Robinson's achievement as a poet, a professional writer, a formative influence on the Romantic movement, and a participant in the literary, political, and social scene of the late 1700s.Introduction: Wreath of Fame 1. Formal Assignations - Robinson, from Merry to Coleridge 2. So Goes the World: Robinson's Early Political Poetry 3. The Petrarchan Sappho/The Sapphic Petrarch 4. The Trouble with Tabitha Bramble 5. The Prosody of Dreams: Robinson and Coleridge Redux 6. Assembling The Progress of Liberty and Robinson's Corpus

An erudite study of Mary Robinson's use of poetic form as both a key motivation for, and a dialectic response within, the writing of poetry in the late eighteenth century. - Review 19

Here, finally, is the first full-length study of Mary Robinson's poetry and the most insightful work on that author since Judith Pascoe's Romantic Theatricality. Beginning with Robinson's years as one of John Bell's featured poets in The World and the Oracle, Robinson tracks her development from newspaper ing?nue to central contributor for Daniel Stuart's Morning Post. Throughout we find sustained attention to Robinson's technical achievements as a poet, from the odes of Laura Maria to the sonnets of 'Sappho' to the later, virtuoso works that eventually became Lyrical Tales. Here, contexts beget forms, and formal innovations take on political valences. Equally welcome is the decision to incorporate her other writings - her many novels, treatises, plays, and tracts, indeed, her entire oeuvre - to bear on the poetry. A truly foundational work. - Michael Gamer, Associate Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania

In Robinson's nuanced and learned readings, Mary Robinson's poems snap into focus. The formal virtuosity of the poems rewards this critic's efforts to understand and winnl"