Elizabeth Rowe
Encyclopedia
Life
She was the eldest daughter of Elizabeth Portnell and Walter Singer, a dissenting minister. Born in IlchesterIlchester
Ilchester is a village and civil parish, situated on the River Yeo or Ivel, five miles north of Yeovil, in the English county of Somerset. The parish, which includes the village of Sock Dennis and the old parish of Northover, has a population of 2,021...
, Somerset
Somerset
The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...
, England, she began writing at the age of twelve and when she was nineteen, began a correspondence with John Dunton
John Dunton
John Dunton was an English bookseller and author. In 1691, he founded an Athenian Society to publish The Athenian Mercury, the first major popular periodical and first miscellaneous periodical in England.-Early life:...
, bookseller and founder of the Athenian Society.
Between 1693 and 1696 she was the principal contributor of poetry to The Athenian Mercury, and many of these poems were reprinted in Poems on Several Occasions, also published by Dunton. This, her first collection, contains pastorals, hymns, an imitation of Anne Killigrew
Anne Killigrew
Anne Killigrew was an English poet. Born in London, Killigrew is perhaps best known as the subject of a famous elegy by the poet John Dryden entitled To The Pious Memory of the Accomplish'd Young Lady Mrs. Anne Killigrew . She was however a skilful poet in her own right, and her Poems were...
, and a "vehement defence of women's right to poetry," in which she defends women, "over'rul'd by the Tyranny of the Prouder Sex." The Thynnes, friends of Anne Finch
Anne Finch
Anne Finch may refer to:* Anne Conway, Viscountess Conway née Finch, , an English philosopher* Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea , Countess and poet...
, became her patrons. Courted by several men, notably Matthew Prior
Matthew Prior
Matthew Prior was an English poet and diplomat.Prior was the son of a Nonconformist joiner at Wimborne Minster, East Dorset. His father moved to London, and sent him to Westminster School, under Dr. Busby. On his father's death, he left school, and was cared for by his uncle, a vintner in Channel...
and Isaac Watts
Isaac Watts
Isaac Watts was an English hymnwriter, theologian and logician. A prolific and popular hymnwriter, he was recognised as the "Father of English Hymnody", credited with some 750 hymns...
, she married poet and biographer Thomas Rowe, thirteen years her junior, in 1710. Their marriage was reportedly happy, but short: Thomas died of tuberculosis in 1715 and Elizabeth was inconsolable. She wrote the impassioned "On the death of Mr Thomas Rowe," said to have been an inspiration for Pope's
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
Eloisa to Abelard
Eloisa to Abelard
Published in 1717, Eloisa to Abelard is a poem by Alexander Pope . It is an Ovidian heroic epistle inspired by the 12th-century story of Héloïse's illicit love for, and secret marriage to, her teacher Pierre Abélard, perhaps the most popular teacher and philosopher in Paris, and the brutal...
(1720). In it, she wrote "For thee at once I from the world retire, / To feed in silent shades a hopeless fire," and indeed, made good her word and retired to her father's house in Frome.
Her father died in 1719 and left her a considerable inheritance, half the annual income of which she gave to charity. Her literary production during these years was high, and most of the texts she published were devotional or moral. Though modern tastes may find these writings overly didactic, they were popular: her Friendship in Death went into sixty editions through the eighteenth century. At various times Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
, Richardson
Samuel Richardson
Samuel Richardson was an 18th-century English writer and printer. He is best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded , Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady and The History of Sir Charles Grandison...
, and Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
each praised her work. Despite the reputation of being a bereaved recluse, Rowe maintained a wide and active correspondence and was closely involved in local concerns until she died of apoplexy
Apoplexy
Apoplexy is a medical term, which can be used to describe 'bleeding' in a stroke . Without further specification, it is rather outdated in use. Today it is used only for specific conditions, such as pituitary apoplexy and ovarian apoplexy. In common speech, it is used non-medically to mean a state...
at the age of sixty-two. Her works continued to be popular well into the nineteenth century, went through multiple editions, circulated on both sides of the Atlantic, and were frequently translated.
Works
- Poems on Several Occasions: Written by Philomela (John Dunton, 1696)
- Contributor, TonsonTonsonTonson was the name of a family of London booksellers and publishers in the 17th and 18th centuries.Richard and Jacob Tonson , sons of a London barber-surgeon, started in 1676 and 1677 independently as booksellers and publishers in London...
's Poetical Miscellanies: the Fifth Part (1704) - Divine hymns and poems on several occasions … by Philomela, and several other ingenious persons (1704; second edition, A Collection of Divine Hymns and Poems [1709])
- "On the death of Mr Thomas Rowe," Lintot'sBarnaby Bernard LintotBarnaby Bernard Lintot , English publisher, was born at Southwater, Sussex, and started business as a publisher in London about 1698...
Poems on Several Occasions (1717); appended to the second edition of Alexander PopeAlexander PopeAlexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
's Eloisa to Abelard (1720) - Friendship in Death: in Twenty Letters from the Dead to the Living (1728)
- Letters Moral and Entertaining (1729–32), a three-part series
- The History of Joseph (1736, 8 vols.; expanded 10 vol. edition published posthumously in 1739)
- Philomela: Poems by Mrs. Elizabeth Singer [now Rowe] of Frome (1737 [i.e. 1736]), pub. by Edmund CurllEdmund CurllEdmund Curll was an English bookseller and publisher. His name has become synonymous, through the attacks on him by Alexander Pope, with unscrupulous publication and publicity. Curll rose from poverty to wealth through his publishing, and he did this by approaching book printing in a mercenary...
without consent - Devout Exercises of the Heart in Meditation and Soliloquy, Prayer and Praise (1737)
- The Miscellaneous Works in Prose and Verse of Mrs Elizabeth Rowe (2 vols., 1739)
Etexts
- The History of Joseph. A Poem in Ten Books.
- "The Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe." Poems on Several Occasions. by Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe. To which is prefixed an account of the life and writings of the author. London: Printed for D. Midwinter in St. Paul's Church-yard, 1759.
- Select poems by Elizabeth Singer Rowe: "A Paraphrase on the Canticles. Chap. V."; To Mrs. Arabella Marrow, in the Country"; "On the works of Creation."
Resources
- Blain, Virginia, et al., eds. "Rowe , Elizabeth (Singer)." The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1990. 925.
- Greer, Germaine, et al., eds. "Elizabeth Singer." Kissing the Rod: an anthology of seventeenth-century women's verse. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1988. 383-95.
- Lonsdale, Roger ed. "Elizabeth Rowe (née Singer)." Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. 45-52.
- Pritchard, Jonathan. “Rowe , Elizabeth (1674–1737).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 7 Apr. 2007.
- Stanton, Kamille Stone. "The Friendship Poetry of Elizabeth Singer Rowe (1674-1737): Usurping a Poetic Tradition on behalf of a Usurping Monarch." Interactions Spring, 2006: 105-119.