Notes

1 In their Introduction, Feldman and Robinson state that “Seward was the first woman sonneteer with any substantial impact upon the tradition” (10). They also state, however, that “[Charlotte] Smith and [William Lisle] Bowles set the tone for the Romantic sonnet and its emphasis on feeling” (12).

2 See, for example, McGann, Jerome. The Poetics of Sensibility: A Revolution in Literary Style. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996. 156-58. Print; Hawley, Judith. “Charlotte Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets: Losses and Gains.” Women’s Poetry in the Enlightenment: The Making of a Canon, 1730-1820. Eds. Isobel Armstrong and Virginia Blain. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 1999. 184-98. Print; Nagle, Christopher C. Sexuality and the Culture of Sensibility in the British Romantic Era. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007. 50-55. Print.

3 Staves, to take one example, quotes these phrases at her study’s conclusion, disagreeing with Seward’s opinion but endorsing her right to criticize Smith’s writings (439).

4 Cary, Henry Francis. Sonnets and Odes. London, 1788. 5-6. Print.

5 Clifford first detailed the many inaccuracies of Seward’s letters in “The Authenticity of Anna Seward’s Published Correspondence.” Barnard discusses Seward’s decision to craft her letters into an autobiography in Anna Seward: A Constructed Life.

6 One thinks of the sign Bill Clinton’s campaign manager, James Carville, famously placed above the candidate’s desk during the 1992 presidential campaign, reminding him to repeat his chief theme: “It’s the economy, stupid!”

7 A striking example of this practice occurred in 1794, when James Boswell insulted Seward in The Gentleman’s Magazine to end an ongoing, published exchange over the characterization of Samuel Johnson in his recently-published Life. In March, Seward wrote to several friends, including Henry Cary, lamenting she had no father or brother to defend her honor against Boswell but thanking them for sending letters to the GM in her defense (see Seward, Letters, 3:346). That same month, her cousin Henry White published a letter supporting Seward, using some of the same phrases in Seward’s letter to Cary (GM 75: 196-97).

8 Kramnick’s chapter “The Cultural Logic of Late Feudalism” examines the canonization of Spenser, but many of his points apply likewise to contemporary discussions of Milton. Thomas F. Bonnell has recently disputed Kramnick’s logic: since the bookselling trade was sales-driven, it would not have made sense to emphasize Milton’s and Spenser’s inaccessibility (22-23). Academic critics like the Wartons were concerned about corrupt texts and wished to encourage the reading of correct texts. Bonnell’s point is well-taken, but for consumers like Seward, anxious to prove herself a discriminating reader and critic, the argument that Milton was “caviary to the general” would have increased his appeal.

9 Seward would probably have been familiar with The Art of Poetry, translated by Sir William Soames and revised by John Dryden.

10 Fussell remarks that “one of the basic aesthetic principles of conservative metric in the eighteenth century is that the poet has not only the right but the duty to improve natural phonetic materials until they become fit for elevated uses” (75). Although the O.E.D. lists “complicate” as a synonym for intricate and complex, that use was evidently more prevalent in the seventeenth century. Poets such as Crabbe and Southey still used “complicate” in that sense, however, and Seward probably chose to do so due to the word’s striking, and increasingly unusual, quality.