1. Anna Seward was an English Romantic poet, often called the Swan of Lichfield.
25 Facts About Anna Seward
1. 2.
Anna Seward benefited from her father's progressive views on female education.
3.
In 1749, Anna Seward's father was appointed a Canon-Residentiary at Lichfield Cathedral.
4.
Anna Seward described in a poem, The Anniversary, how she and her sister first met Honora on returning from a walk.
5.
Anna Seward was said to have an admirable character, though less talented than her sister.
6.
Anna Seward consoled herself with affection for Honora Sneyd, as she describes in Visions, written a few days after her sister's death.
7.
Anna Seward cared for her father in the last ten years of his life, after he had suffered a stroke.
8.
Anna Seward continued to dwell at the Bishop's Palace until she died in 1809.
9.
The family home in the Bishop's Palace became the centre of a literary circle that included Erasmus Darwin, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, where Anna Seward was encouraged to join in, as she later relates.
10.
Anna Seward was a poet himself, yet tried to curb Anna's passion for poetry, although she chose the composition of it for her own studies.
11.
Anna Seward came to be seen as heading a coterie of regional poets, influenced by writers such as Thomas Whalley, William Hayley, Robert Southey, Helen Maria Williams, Hannah More and the Ladies of Llangollen.
12.
Anna Seward was involved in the Lunar Society in Birmingham, which would sometimes meet at their home.
13.
Anna Seward corresponded with other members such as Josiah Wedgwood and Richard Lovell Edgeworth.
14.
Anna Seward's work appeared in the yearbook of poems from the gatherings, a debt that Seward acknowledged in "Poem to the Memory of Lady Miller".
15.
Anna Seward was outspoken about the institution of marriage, not unlike her heroine in Louisa, a position later echoed in the novels of her step-niece, Maria Edgeworth.
16.
Anna Seward had friends of both genders, although only seeking romantic relations with women.
17.
Since 1985, Anna Seward remains within the lesbian poetic canon, but Teresa Barnard argues against this, based more on examining her correspondence than on her poetry, while more recently Redford Barrett has argued for it, based on other sources.
18.
Much of the literature on Anna Seward's relations focuses on her childhood friend Honora Sneyd: sonnets reveal her passion for her when they were together and her despair when Sneyd married Richard Edgeworth.
19.
Anna Seward began to write poetry early with encouragement from her father, a published poet, but against the wishes of her mother.
20.
Anna Seward struck a middle path in a period when women had to tread carefully.
21.
Anna Seward contributed to Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, but was less than happy with Boswell's treatment of her material.
22.
Anna Seward was seen variously as an authority on English literature by contemporaries such as Walter Scott, Samuel Johnson and Robert Southey.
23.
Anna Seward wrote a biography: Memoirs of the Life of Dr Darwin.
24.
Keenly interested in botany, Anna Seward associated closely with the Lichfield Botanical Society and published anonymously in its name.
25.
Anna Seward appears as a character in the novel The Ladies by Doris Grumbach.