32 The Poetry of Mary Robinsongallery of avatars are Laura, Laura Maria, Oberon, Portia, Tabitha
Bramble, and Sappho, although I would include “M. R.” and “Mrs.
Robinson” as having discernible valances among this group of signs.
But the minor avatars, too, have peculiar significations and resonance
attached incidentally to certain poems. “Humanitas,” for instance,
has a specific political determinacy evinced by its Latin etymology
(see page 168); “Lesbia” is a counterpart to Robinson’s own Sappho
avatar but with deliberate heteroerotic overtones. Robinson signed a
couple of poems in April of 1800 as “Bridget,” which may refer to a
character in her own poem “The Confessor—A Sanctified Tale” or
to the shrewish wife of Franklin’s Poor Richard. And Robinson used
her Julia avatar primarily for lightly erotic poetry during the early
1790s, including her popular lyric “Stanzas, Written between Dover
and Calais, July 24th, 1792” (1: 180–1), which in truth arose from a
bitter separation from Tarleton but which, in the context of a news-
paper exchange in the Oracle, would have appeared to result from
Julia’s affair with a certain “Carlos.”^8 But Julia was also an attempt
at partial self- effacement, too, such as with the fawning “Sonnet, To
the Prince of Wales,” which Robinson signed “Julia” before she was
known to be the poet behind the pseudonym (1: 184). But there
is likely some irony in this as well, since, as Robinson would have
known, Julia is the granddaughter of Augustus and, according to the
lore, the supposed lover of Ovid. Augustus banished both Julia and
Ovid in the same year—a feeling Robinson knew well, having been
banished figuratively by her lover’s father, King George III.The Della Crusca Network
When Mary Robinson returned from her self- imposed continental
exile at the beginning of 1788, the poetry of the World was all the
rage. The sensational poetic exchange between Della Crusca and Anna
Matilda, carried on in the columns of this innovative newspaper, was
at the height of its popularity, with readers speculating feverishly on
the identities of the two rhapsodic poets. Later, in July, an attractive
two- volume anthology of poems collected from the World appeared
from the press of John Bell. Edited by Bell’s colorful partner, Captain
Edward Topham, this anthology gave Robinson a context in which to
begin her career as a professional writer, particularly as it established
the kind of poet she was going to be. Robinson’s continental sojourn
had been partly for convalescence and partly to escape her creditors
and the infamy of the gossip pages. Now, back in England, she had to9780230100251_03_ch01.indd 329780230100251_03_ch01.indd 32 12/31/2010 4:20:11 PM12/31/2010 4:20:11 PM
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