The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

38 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

Register for that year praises the two titles for having “afforded us

much pleasure and entertainment”: these “plaintive, philosophical,

and humorous poems,” the review continues, “are distinguished by

lofty imagery, and poetical enthusiasm” and “by a beautiful ease and

simplicity” (261). Such a favorable assessment of this poetry in early

1789 stands in stark contrast to the ferocity of The Baviad, William

Gifford’s satirical evisceration of Della Crusca, Bell, and the other

poets associated with them two years later.

At the beginning of the Della Crusca- Anna Matilda phenomenon,

the Bell–Topham nexus was central to this network because it pro-

vided the media: this nexus selected and printed the poems in the

newspaper, collected and published them in a book, with Bell ulti-

mately offering solo book deals to those writers—Merry, Cowley, and

Robinson—who proved to be the most popular. Bell would also pub-

lish Merry’s political poems, which appeared under Merry’s name,

The Laurel of Liberty (1790) and Ode for the Fourteenth of July, 1791,

a Day Consecrated to Freedom (1791). So, clearly, from a professional

point of view, Robinson’s publishing with Bell during 1788–92 is

networking in today’s sense; that is, for Robinson, it was a means of

doing business with a coveted publisher, Bell, who would go on to

publish her poetry in the World, in the Oracle, and in four editions

of his next anthology of Della Cruscan verse, The British Album. Bell

also would publish the first four books of poetry she would produce

as a professional writer—Ainsi va le Monde in 1790, her first volume

of Poems by Mrs. M. Robinson in 1791, her Monody to the Memory of Sir

Joshua Reynolds in 1792 and Ode to the Harp of the Late Accomplished

and Amiable Louisa Hanway in 1793—as well as her first novel, the

best- selling Vancenza; or the Dangers of Credulity in 1792.

Although she made little money from these books (Bell him-

self would go bankrupt in 1793), these publications rehabilitated

Robinson’s image to such a great extent that, reviewing her 1791

volume, Ralph Giffiths’ Monthly Review hailed Robinson as “the

English Sappho,” ostensibly in tribute to her poetical talents:

The fair writer of these poems has been, for some time past, known

to the literary world under the assumed names of Laura, Laura

Maria, and Oberon.... [I]f people of taste and judgment were

impressed with a favourable idea of the poetess... they will deem

yet higher of our English Sappho, after the perusal of the present

volume; in which are some pieces, equal, perhaps, to the best pro-

ductions (so far as the knowledge of them is come down to us,) of

the Lesbian Dame, in point of tenderness, feeling, poetic imagery,

warmth, elegance, and above all, delicacy of expression, in which our

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