Women Romantic Poets

'Another May new buds and flowers shall bring;Ah! why has happiness—no second Spring?'The period between 1780 and 1840 was a tremendously rich one for the production of poetry. Everyone from labourers to lords, milk-maids to marchionesses, read poetry and large numbers of people also wrote it. The daily newspapers and monthly periodicals, growing rapidly in readership and significance during this time, groaned under the weight of vast amounts of verse, and were often happy to usher relative unknowns into print. Women played an important role in this diverse and popular writing community—some of the most prominent and popular poets of the period were women. But the "great forgetting" of the work of female poets that began in the Victorian period and continued until the emergence of feminist Romanticism in the 1990s, rendered Romantic women poets largely invisible for much of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This new anthology places women in their rightful position at the centre of the diverse and incredibly popular poetic culture of the Romantic period. Including selections from well-known figures such as Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson and Letitia Landon alongside of the work of lesser-known poets such as Amelia Opie, Ann Batten Cristall and Isabella Lickbarrow, this volume offers an accessible and erudite introduction to the female poetry of the Romantic era. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.