In her critical biography of Anna Seward (1742-1809), Teresa Barnard examines the poet's unpublished letters and manuscripts, providing a fresh perspective on Seward's life and historical milieu that restores and problematizes Seward's carefully constructed narrative of her life. Of the poet Anna Seward, it may be said with some veracity that hers was an epistolary life. What is known of Seward comes from six volumes of her letters and from juvenile letters that prefaced her books of poetry, all published posthumously. That Seward intended her correspondence to serve as her autobiography is clear, but she could not have anticipated that the letters she intended for publication would be drastically edited and censored by her literary editor, Walter Scott, and by her publisher, Archibald Constable. Stripped of their vitality and much of their significance, the published letters omit telling tales of the intricacies of the marriage market and Seward's own battles against gender inequality in the educational and workplace spheres. Seward's correspondents included Erasmus Darwin, William Hayley, Helen Maria Williams, and Robert Southey, and her letters are packed with stories and anecdotes about her friends' lives and characters, what they looked like, and how they lived. Particularly compelling is Barnard's discussion of Seward's astonishing last will and testament, a twenty-page document that summarizes her life, achievements, and self-definition as a writing woman. Barnard's biography not only challenges what is known about Seward, but provides new information about the lives and times of eighteenth-century writers.
Biography
Teresa Barnard is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Derby, UK
’(Barnard) makes a good case for Seward as a strong-willed, independent-minded woman, whose comments on people, opinions and literary movements are often pungent, often rewarding....Seward has much to teach us about the historical conditions of women's lives and about the individual's negotiation with her shaping context. This attractive book (whose cover features John Downman's sexy portrait, not the drabber and better-known work by George Romney) is welcome...’ Times Higher Education ’Barnard makes an excellent case for Seward’s epistolary self-construction and iconoclastic career; her biography also offers a wealth of insights for the student and scholar of eighteenth-century literary history.’ Romantic Textualities
