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Women Poets of the Romantic Period
Individual Item Contents: WPRP 163

A • B • C • D • E • F • G • H • I • J • K • L • M • N • O • P • Q • R • S • T • U • V • W • X • Y • Z

Author

West, Jane (1758-1852).

Title

Miscellaneous poetry, by Mrs. West; written at an early period of life.

Imprint

London: printed for W.T.Swift, 1786.

Physical description

[4],44p;4o. With an errata slip pasted to the final page. Disbound.

Call number

WPRP 163 OVERSIZE.

Citation

L,O(-err);CtY (?errata), MH-H, NCD, (Unverified); IU in ESTC. None added in NUC. Jackson, p.365, CBEL,III,772. Janet Todd, A Dictionary of British and American Women Writers 1660-1800, p. 319.

Bio

Jane West, 1758-1852, novelist and poet. This is her rare first book. An earlier volume, Miscellaneous Poems, 1780, given to her in CBEL and Todd is, according to Jackson, by her father. Jane West, friend of Sarah Trimmer, was anti-Jacobin and anti radical. Her three novels convey the message that women should stifle their feelings in the interest of duty. The contrast in A Gossip's Story, 1796, between Marianne, ruined by excessive sensibility, and her sensible sister Louisa anticipates the theme of Austen's Sense and Sensibility. Jane West was unsure about whether women of her class should write poetry; in one poem she expresses the fear that it might be an unjustifiable use of time. This compunction she overcomes in her own case as the purposes of the poetry was to inculcate moral virtue. In the "Advertisement" she speaks defensively of herself as "fully engrossed by the essential duties of domestic life" and "not...able to consider Poetry in any other light, than as an agreeable relaxation."

Notes

Includes Dedication and Advertisement.

Epigraph

none

Contents

No Contents page. Includes:

Elegy to a Friend, who advised the Author to correct and Publish her Poems	1
An Elegy Upon the Death of The Honourable Isabella Montagu, only daughter of Lord Beaulieu, who died on her return from Bristol Hot Wells. Composed at the age of Sixteen	4
Edward and Harriet, an Elegy, Founded Upon Facts	9
An Elegy, Occasioned by a great Mortality in the Village where the Author resided. Written at the Age of Eighteen	14
An Elegy to a Gentleman, Upon his Intention of going Abroad soon after he had completed some elegant Improvements near his Country Seat	17
Alleyne and Ella, A Legendary Tale.
- Part the First	19
- Part the Second	27
Spring. An Ode	37
The Penitent	41



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Women Poets of the Romantic Period Individual Item Contents: WPRP 163

Women Poets of the Romantic Period
Individual Item Contents: WPRP 163