"The Swan of Lichfield," Anna Seward was the daughter of a canon of Lichfield Cathedral. She was born in Eyam, Derbyshire and moved with her family to Lichfield in 1754; she was the friend or acquaintance of Erasmus Darwin, William Hayley, Francis Mundy, Thomas Day, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Hester Thrale Piozzi, and other notables. In her lifetime, Seward's effusive and sentimental poetry did as much to advance the cause of women's writing as afterwards it did damage. Her father, Thomas Seward, published in Dodsley's Collection.
TEXT RECORDS:
1765 ca.Evander to Emillia.
1768 ca.Monody on Mrs. Richard Vyse.
1770 ca.Ode to Content.
1772To Time Past. Written Dec. 1772.
1781Ode to Ignorance; in imitation of Spencer. ["Knowledge, a Poem."]
1782Poem to the Memory of Lady Miller.
1785Ode to Melpomene.
1785Verses written by Miss Anna Seward in the Blank Leaves of her own Poems, presented by her to William Newton.
1786Ode to Salust. Book II. Ode II.
1786To Valgius. From Horace Book II. Ode II.
1787Ode on General Eliott's Return from Gibraltar.
1787To Licinius Murena. From Horace, Book II. Ode X.
1792[To Henry Francis Cary, on early Poets.]
1796Llangollan Vale.
1796Pastoral Ballad.
1802Chatterton's Poem Charity, modernized from its obsolete English.
1802Complaint of an Arabian Lover. Ode.
1802[To Henry John Todd, 11 June, 1802.]
1805To Miss Catherine Mallet.
1805[Note on Akenside as an imitator of Spenser.]
PUBLICATIONS:
Elegy on Captain Cook. 1780.
Monody on Major Andre. 1781.
Poem to the memory of Lady Miller. 1782.
Louisa: a poetical novel in four epistles. 1784.
Ode on General Elliott's return from Gibraltar. 1787.
Variety: a collection of essays. 1788.
Llangollen vale, with other poems. 1796.
Original sonnets. 1799.
Memoirs of the life of Dr. Darwin. 1804.
Memoirs of Abelard and Eloisa. 1805.
Blindness, a poem. 1806.
Monumental inscriptions in Ashbourn church, Derbyshire. 1806.
Poetical works, ed. Walter Scott. 3 vols, 1810.
Letters ... 1784-1807, ed. Archibald Constable. 6 vols, 1811.
PROFILE AND
ASSOCIATES:
English
Anglican
privately educated
poet
translator
woman writer
Gentleman's Magazine
General Evening Post
Poetical Register
The Morning Chronicle
Brooke Boothby
James Boswell
Frances Brooke
Rev. George Butt
Rev. Henry Francis Cary
William Cowper
Dr. Erasmus Darwin
Thomas Day
Dr. Hugh Downman
Richard Lovell Edgeworth
Rev. George Gregory
William Grove
George Hardinge
Dr. Henry Harington
William Hayley
Margaret Holford
Edward Jerningham
Samuel Johnson
Lady Miller
Francis Noel Clarke Mundy
John Nichols
Thomas Park
Hester Thrale Piozzi
Rev. Richard Polwhele
Rev. Robert Potter
Samuel Jackson Pratt
Sir Walter Scott
Rev. Thomas Seward
William Seward
Robert Southey
Rev. William Bagshaw Stevens
Rev. Henry John Todd
Melesina Chenevix Trench
Dr. Nathaniel Tucker
Helen Maria Williams
REFERENCE:
DNB; NCBEL.
"Anecdotes of the Author" in European Magazine 1 (April 1782) 288-90; "Miss Seward" Bristol and Bath Magazine 2 (1783) 347-51; Hyper-Criticism on Miss Seward's Louisa, including Observations on the Nature and Privileges of Poetic Language (1785); Catalogue of five hundred Celebrated Authors (1788); "Strictures, by Miss Seward" Gentleman's Magazine 59 (April-August 1789); Henry White, "Llangollen Vale Defended" Gentleman's Magazine 66 (July 1796) 556-59; "Sketch of Miss Seward" Monthly Mirror 3 (January-February 1797) 9-14, 73-77 [portrait]; David Rivers, Literary Memoirs of Living Authors (1798); "Anna Seward" Weekly Magazine [Philadelphia] 4 (18 May 1799) 169-70 [from Rivers]; "Miss Seward" Lady's Monthly Museum 2 (March 1799) 169-76; John Nichols, "Seward's Sonnets and Odes from Horace" Gentleman's Magazine 69 (1799) ii 1065-66; "Miss Seward" Ladies' Monthly Museum 2 (March 1799) 169-76 [portrait]; Poetical Register for 1801 (1802), 1802 (1803), 1803 (1804), 1804 (1805), 1805 (1807), 1806-07 (1811), 1808-09 (1812); "Biographical Sketches: Miss Anna Seward" Flowers of Literature for 1803 (1804) 30-35 [portrait]; Peter L. Courtier, in Lyre of Love (1806); obituary in Gentleman's Magazine 79 (April 1809) 378-79; obituary in Universal Magazine NS 11 (April 1809) 377-78; obituary in Monthly Magazine 27 (May-June 1809) 410, 515-16; obituary in Censura Literaria 10 (1809) 408-09; "Miss Seward" Lady's Monthly Museum NS 6 (June 1809) 281-82 [portrait]; obituary in Literary Panorama 6 (September 1809) 1241-43; obituary in Select Reviews [Philadelphia] 2 (August 1809) 136-38; Annual Register for 1809 (1809) 606; "Sketch of the Life of Miss Anna Seward" Mirror of Taste [Philadelphia] 2 (October 1810) 177-79; memoir by Walter Scott in Poems (1810); Gentleman's Magazine 81 (1811) ii 154, 241; Alexander Chalmers, General Biographical Dictionary (1812-17); John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes (1812-15); "Miss Anna Seward" British Lady's Magazine 3 (June 1818) 409-15; Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the XVIII Century (1817-58); "Memoir of Miss Anna Seward" New British Lady's Magazine 2 (April 1819) 137-40 [portrait]; "Miss Seward" Ladies' Monthly Museum S3 13 (March 1821) 121-23 [portrait]; "Miss Seward" Ladies Monthly Museum NS 20 (1824) 96; Robert Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica (1824); letters in Richard Polwhele, Traditions and Recollections (1826); Alexander Dyce, Specimens of British Poetesses (1827); "Major Andre and Miss Seward" The Souvenir [Philadelphia] 1 (19 March, 30 April 1828) 298-99, 379; The Georgian Era: Memoirs of the most Eminent Persons (1832-34); Robert Chambers, Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1844); Anne Katherine Elwood, Memoirs of Literary Ladies of England (1843); Frederic Rowton, Female Poets of Great Britain (1853); Sarah Josepha Hale, Woman's Record (1855); Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-71; 1882); Thomas Constable, Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents (1873); Margaret Oliphant, in Literary History of England (1882); Eric S. Robertson, in English Poetesses, a Series of Critical Biographies (1883); Moulton, Library of Literary Criticism (1901-05); E. V. Lucas, A Swan and her Friends (1907); Florence MacCunn, Sir Walter Scott's Friends (1909) 275-89; Margaret Ashmun, The Singing Swan: an Account of Anna Seward and her Acquaintance with Dr. Johnson, Boswell, and others of their Time (1931); Hesketh Pearson, ed. The Swan of Lichfield (1936); Muriel Kent, "A Lichfield Group" Cornhill Magazine 158 (1938) 347-58; Samuel Holt Monk, "Anna Seward and the Romantic Poets" in E. L. Griggs, ed. Wordsworth and Coleridge: Studies in Honor of G. L. Harper (1939); James L. Clifford, "The Authenticity of Anna Seward's Published Correspondence" Modern Philology 39 (1941) 113-22; Alfred Owen Aldridge, "Akenside, Anna Seward, and Colour" Notes and Queries 193 (1948) 562-63; R. M. Myers, Seward: An Eighteenth-Century Handelian (1947); Butt, OHEL (1979); Todd, Dictionary of ... Women Writers 1660-1800 (1987); Gretchen M. Foster, Pope versus Dryden: A Controversy in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1789-91 (1989); Lonsdale, Eighteenth-Century Women Poets (1989); Jackson, Romantic Poetry by Women: A Bibliography (1993); Chadwyck-Healey English Poetry Database (1995); Feldman, British Women Poets (1997).
COMMENTARY RECORDS
for Anna Seward:
BIOGRAPHY RECORDS
for Anna Seward:
AUTHOR AS CRITIC:
(commentary records)