The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

114 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

that work, the only contemporary woman poet Robinson identifies in

the main body of the pamphlet is “Mrs. Robinson,” and that refer-

ence is apposite to Sappho and her own “legitimate sonnets” (8: 143).

Most telling is the conclusion where Robinson names distinguished

contemporary women authors in various genres: for providing “the

best translations from the French and German” she credits Susannah

Dobson, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Ann Plumptre; for “the more pro-

found researches in the dead languages” she distinguishes Elizabeth

Carter, Millecent Thomas, Anne Francis, Anne Seymour Damer;

noteworthy women playwrights who have won “the wreath of fame”

include Hannah Cowley, Inchbald, Sophia Lee, and Hannah More;

and significant biographers include Dobson, Ann Ford Thicknesse,

Hester Piozzi, Elizabeth Montagu, and Helen Maria Williams (8:

160). She does not fail to praise women novelists and women poets:

“The best novels that have been written, since those of Smollet [sic],

Richardson, and Fielding, have been produced by women,” she writes.

Robinson expresses high regard for women poets too:

Poetry has unquestionably risen high in British literature from the pro-

ductions of female pens; for many English women have produced such

original and beautiful compositions, that the first critics and scholars

of the age have wondered, while they applauded. (8: 160)

She, however, chooses not to recognize any of them by name. Although

she lists thirty- nine women writers in her alphabetical “List of British

Female Literary Characters Living in the Eighteenth Century,”

including poets such as Barbauld, Anna Seward, and Charlotte Smith

(161–3), Robinson remains the only contemporary poet identif ied by

“Anne Frances Randall” in the body of the work. The pseudonym, in

this case, is no avatar, rather providing an illusion of impartiality as

Robinson promotes herself as the superlative example—the English

Sappho indeed.

Robinson viewed her literary corpus through gendered bifocals.

Like many of her time, Robinson recognized the contemporary novel

as a feminine genre and the poetic tradition as a masculine one. She

could perform in either genre, deploying either of these specifically

gendered author functions, but she considered poetry to be the more

legitimate genre, the one with more artistic authority, and thus the

one most likely to earn her fame as an author. Her fiction was writ-

ten for money and, unwracked by any serious literary pretense, could

therefore address more transient, contemporary issues, frequently

with satire; her fiction is thus more nearsighted and free to associate

9780230100251_05_ch03.indd 1149780230100251_05_ch03.indd 114 12/28/2010 11:08:39 AM12/28/2010 11:08:39 AM

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