Jane Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage for the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works are an implicit critique of the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. Her deft use of social commentary, realism and biting irony have earned her acclaim among critics and scholars.
A sestina is a fixed verse form consisting of six stanzas of six lines each, normally followed by a three-line envoi. The words that end each line of the first stanza are used as line endings in each of the following stanzas, rotated in a set pattern.
Robert Southwell, SJ, also Saint Robert Southwell, was an English Catholic priest of the Jesuit Order. He was also an author of Christian poetry in Elizabethan English, and a clandestine missionary in Elizabethan England.
Hester ChaponenéeMulso, was an English writer of conduct books for women. She became associated with the London Bluestockings.
Elizabeth Montagu was a British social reformer, patron of the arts, salonnière, literary critic and writer, who helped to organize and lead the Blue Stockings Society. Her parents were both from wealthy families with strong ties to the British peerage and learned life. She was sister to Sarah Scott, author of A Description of Millenium [sic] Hall and the Country Adjacent. She married Edward Montagu, a man with extensive landholdings, to become one of the richer women of her era. She devoted this fortune to fostering English and Scottish literature and to the relief of the poor.
Jane West (1758–1852), was an English novelist who published as Prudentia Homespun and Mrs. West. She also wrote conduct literature, poetry and educational tracts.
Lady Jane Cavendish (1621–1669) was a noted poet and playwright, the daughter of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle and later the wife of Charles Cheyne, Viscount Newhaven. Along with her literary achievements, Jane helped manage her father's properties while he spent the English Civil War in exile; she was responsible for a variety of military correspondences and for salvaging many of her family's valuable possessions. Later in life, she became an important community member in Chelsea, using her resources to make improvements on Chelsea Church and otherwise benefit her friends and neighbours. Marked by vitality, integrity, perseverance and creativity, Jane's life and works tell the story of a Royalist woman's indomitable spirit during the English Civil War and the English Restoration.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross (c.1578–c.1640) was a Scottish poet.
Elizabeth Singer Rowe was an English poet, essayist and fiction writer called "the ornament of her sex and age" and the "Heavenly Singer". She was among 18th-century England's most widely read authors. She wrote mainly religious poetry, but her best-known work, Friendship in Death (1728), is a Jansenist miscellany of imaginary letters from the dead to the living. Despite a posthumous reputation as a pious, bereaved recluse, Rowe corresponded widely and was involved in local concerns at Frome in her native Somerset. She remained popular into the 19th century on both sides of the Atlantic and in translation. Though little read today, scholars have called her stylistically and thematically radical for her time.
The Blue Stockings Society was an informal women's social and educational movement in England in the mid-18th century that emphasised education and mutual cooperation. It was founded in the early 1750s by Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Vesey and others as a literary discussion group, a step away from traditional, non-intellectual women's activities. Both men and women were invited to attend, including the botanist, translator and publisher Benjamin Stillingfleet, who, due to his financial standing, did not dress for the occasion as formally as was customary and deemed "proper", in consequence appearing in everyday blue worsted stockings.
Esther Inglis (1571–1624) was a skilled member of the artisan class, as well as a miniaturist, who possessed several skills in areas such as calligraphy, writing, and embroidering. She was born in 1571 in either London or in Dieppe and was later relocated to Scotland, where she was later raised and married. Sharing similarities with Jane Segar, Inglis always signed her work and frequently included self-portraits of herself in the act of writing. However, unlike Jane Segar, Inglis successfully established a career based on manuscript books created for royal patrons. Over the course of her life, Inglis composed around sixty miniature books that display her calligraphic skill with paintings, portraits, and embroidered covers. She mostly dedicated her books to the monarchs, Elizabeth I and James VI and I, and people in power during their reign. She died around 1624, at the age of 53.
The History of England is a 1791 work by Jane Austen, written when the author was fifteen.
Sir Vincent Gerard O'Sullivan was a New Zealand poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, critic, editor, biographer, librettist, and academic. From 1988 to 2004 he was a professor of English literature at Victoria University of Wellington, and in 2013 he was appointed the New Zealand Poet Laureate.
Lady Hester Pulter (1605–1678) was a seventeenth-century poet and writer, whose manuscript was rediscovered in 1996 in the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds. Her major works include "Poems Breathed Forth By the Noble Hadassas", "The Sighes of a Sad Soule Emblematically Breath'd Forth by the Noble Hadassas", and "The Unfortunate Florinda."
Steven W. May is an American academic and author specializing in English Renaissance poetry.
Wendy Scase is Emeritus Geoffrey Shepherd Professor of Medieval English Literature at the University of Birmingham. Her research interests include medieval manuscript production and use; histories of literacy; and relations between medieval literature and law, politics, and religion.
Anne Southwell [née Harris], later called Anne, Lady Southwell, was a poet. Her commonplace book includes a variety of works including political poems, sonnets, occasional verse, and letters to friends.
Sarah Broom (1972–2013) was a New Zealand poet and university lecturer. Her work included two books of poetry, Tigers at Awhitu and Gleam. After her early death from lung cancer, the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize, was established to remember and celebrate her life and work.
