The poetical works of Anna Seward, Vol. 1 [of 3]

This first volume combines a substantial biographical preface with selections from a celebrated eighteenth-century poet’s verse and extracts from her literary correspondence. The opening memoir traces her childhood, family influences, early education, and lifelong devotion to Shakespeare, Milton, classical poetry, and the landscapes of Derbyshire.

The poems range widely in form and feeling, from elegies and love letters in verse to odes, songs, monodies, inscriptions, and theatrical prologues and epilogues. Images of fields, mountains, gardens, the sea, sleep, and changing seasons accompany reflections on friendship, grief, memory, contentment, and artistic inspiration. Among the pieces are tributes to friends and patrons, dramatic works, a poem on blindness, and an invocation to Petrarch and the Persian poets. Together, the poems and correspondence offer an intimate portrait of literary life, personal sensibility, and poetic culture in the eighteenth century.