The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

254 Notes

August 1798); “The Cell of the Atheist,” by “Laura Maria, from a

Poem in Two Books, Not Yet Published,” Morning Post and Gazetteer

( 1 9 A u g u s t 1 7 9 9 ) ; “ T h e H e r m i t o f M o n t B l a n c ,” b y “ M r s. R o b i n s o n ,”

Monthly Magazine 9 (February 1800): 53–5; “The Italian Peasantry,

From an unpublished Poem, by Mrs. Robinson,” Monthly Magazine

9 (April 1800): 260–1; and “Harvest Home,” by “Mrs. Robinson,”

Morning Post and Gazetteer (30 August 1800). This latter poem is

dated August of 1800, suggesting that Robinson continued working

on The Progress of Liberty. Still, it is impossible to know how authori-

tative the final, reconstituted poem is. Unfortunately, I do not have

space in this book to discuss this repurposing.

19. Robinson’s “Sylphid” essays are worth considering in light of her
    poetic self- representations; for more on them, see Setzer’s “Mary
    Robinson’s Sylphid Self.”

5 Stuart’s Laureates II:

A Woman of Undoubted Genius

1. The connection between Coleridge and Robinson has long been
   established and continues to yield provocative studies. Both John
   Livingston Lowes and Elisabeth Schneider mention Robinson in their
   definitive studies of Coleridge, “Kubla Khan,” and Coleridge’s use of
   opium from 1927 and 1953, respectively. The poetic correspondence
   also has figured in important early twentieth- century textual and bib-
   liographical studies by Earl Leslie Griggs, David V. Erdman (“Lost
   Poem Found”), Stephen M. Parrish and Erdman, Carol Landon, and
   R.S. Woof. Since Curran’s “The I Altered” in 1988, the relationship
   between the poets has been explored from many different perspec-
   tives: in the 1990s, Martin J. Levy, Kathryn Ledbetter, Susan Luther,
   Lisa Vargo, and myself took up in greater depth the significance of
   Robinson’s access to Coleridge’s unpublished “Kubla Khan” and
   of Coleridge’s responses to her person and her poetry. More recent
   approaches by Tim Fulford and Judith Hawley have explored the
   dynamics of the relationship in terms of gender, although the result
   has, at times, seemed like tug of war between masculinity and femi-
   ninity. It would be another ten years before the connection would be
   explored again in depth: Ashley Cross’s “Coleridge and Robinson:
   Harping on Lyrical Exchange” is a particularly balanced view of the
   relationship as an exchange between equals whose goals “are mutu-
   ally inclusive, not exclusive of one another” (41). Cross’s perspec-
   tive is particularly helpful to mine because it has established a new
   step beyond the contentions of gender, closely reading the poetry for
   what it says about itself and recognizing the possibility that Robinson
   and Coleridge were also two writers who shared many of the same
   concerns and processes. Eugene Stelzig’s recent essay on their poetic

9780230100251_08_not.indd 2549780230100251_08_not.indd 254 12/28/2010 12:31:43 PM12/28/2010 12:31:43 PM

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