Poetry By English Women

Book excerpt: This comprehensive introductory anthology of poems by forty women writers from Elizabethan to Victorian times includes work by aristocrats and frame-workers, by celebrated figures such as Aphra Behn, the Brontës, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti, and by fascinating but hitherto inaccessible poets such as the unaccountably neglected Margaret Cavendish and Mary Leapor. Love songs, feminist polemic, witty satire and religious rhapsody, bawdy fun and grave meditation abound. Dr R.E. Pritchard in a brief introduction considers the social and publishing difficulties encountered by writing women. The texts are tactfully modernized and annotated. Each poet is introduced with a biographical sketch, followed by suggestions for further reading. Compact yet varied and far-ranging, this anthology will provide enjoyment for any poetry reader and the introduction raises the issues crucial to those interested in the hidden traditions of women's poetry.