The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

Introduction 3

The poems in particular perform Robinson’s self- ref lexive obses-

sion, not with celebrity, but with literary fame. Like many Romantic-

period writers, she invested in her posterity, a gesture that Andrew

Bennett calls “deferred reception,” which involves the construction of

the poetic identity (2). Arguing that the “Romantic culture of poster-

ity” is masculine, Bennett asserts that women writers wrote “counter-

discourses,” arguing that “it is a convention of feminine poetics of

the period that fame is unsought and unwelcome” (72). He inscruta-

bly includes Robinson in a list of women poets who “are all wary of

such a consequence of writing and publishing” (72). Robinson, how-

ever, rarely figures herself in poses of modesty or diffidence. What

Robinson frequent ly refers to as “the wreath of fame” is the subject of

the present study. In contrast to the caprices of celebrity, Robinson’s

conception of fame is essentially Petrarchan: the poet makes her own

“wreath of fame” through the composition of immortal verses. It is

appropriate, then, that her rehabilitation as a significant writer began

with Curran’s recognition of Robinson’s poetic merits and the intrin-

sic interest of her poetry.^4

But today, Robinson also has the dubious distinction of being

labeled the eighteenth- century Madonna, as both Anne Mellor and

Jacqueline Labbe have done (300; “Mary Robinson’s Bicentennial”

4). Although intended as an allegory of female celebrity culture

empowerment, this comparison is not much different from the iden-

tification of a notorious Greek courtesan as “the Mrs. Robinson of

Greece”—as satirist Peter Pindar did in 1783 (18).^5 For a time a suc-

cessful actress, she became a fashionable celebrity and sex symbol, the

subject of gossip and pornography, and eventually a cultural pariah

and an object lesson for young women on the dangers of promiscu-

ity, pleasure seeking, and living beyond one’s means. In the early

1780s, Robinson became known as “Perdita” after rumors began to

circulate of her affair with the Prince of Wales, later George IV, who

supposedly became infatuated with her as the result of her perfor-

mance as Perdita in David Garrick’s adaptation of The Winter’s Tale.

While the Prince only brief ly appeared in the press as “Florizel,” the

epithet applied to Robinson persisted throughout that decade, sig-

nifying her status as a royal courtesan and mocking her fall from the

Prince’s favors. It was always maliciously employed—especially after

it became known that the married Robinson secured from the Prince

an annuity in exchange for returning his love letters. During the

1790s, however, her proliferation of various pen names and her suc-

cess as a professional writer partially neutralized the “Perdita” epi-

thet, and it appears less frequently. Ironically, the appellation, which

9780230100251_02_int.indd 39780230100251_02_int.indd 3 12/28/2010 11:08:07 AM12/28/2010 11:08:07 AM

10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel Robinson

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