34 The Poetry of Mary Robinsonher well- deserved fall from fashionable celebrity into penury and
debility. Around the time of her return to London, on 14 January
1788, the Morning Post and Daily Advertiser reported that “Mrs.
Robinson, the celebrated Perdita, has published, in France, several
pieces of Poetry, which have been well received.” For most of the rest
of her life, public remarks on Robinson’s celebrity always are suf-
fused with irony, encoded with ignominy; Robinson could not escape
entirely being associated with the avatar of her celebrity, Perdita the
“Cyprian devotee.”^9 As a poet, however, she sought to diminish the
potency of such repeated attempts to humiliate her by demonstrating
her poetic powers.
Robinson was eager to exchange identities. The most important
choice of Robinson’s literary career is her participation in the net-
work around Bell. When Robinson returned to London, the success
of this network already had been established with the popularity
of Della Crusca’s poetry. I call this network, therefore, the Della
Crusca network because Merry’s pseudonym was its public avatar.
The Della Crusca network afforded Robinson a crucial opportunity
for exchanging her celebrity for poetic fame. In October, inspired by
the success of Bell’s anthology, Robinson published her poem “Lines
Dedicated to the Memory of a Much- Lamented Young Gentleman,”
her first publication in over a decade. Writing as “Laura,” with delib-
erate Petrarchan resonance, Robinson thus made her first serious
foray onto the literary scene and began to re- appropriate versions of
her public self, displacing her past as actress and courtesan, while
also envisioning other possible contexts for her poetic identity. Merry
provided her a model for doing so: after a few years abroad, he had
repatriated himself in the newspaper as Della Crusca and had become
famous. Merry’s success as Della Crusca showed her how to parlay
form into fame—not just poetic form, but the shape- shifting made
possible by the deployment of avatars.
Robinson’s poet ic net work ing w it h Della Cr usca is part icipat ion in
a conversation and a game that takes place in a very specific medium.
As popular culture, the poetry of the World only facetiously pretends
to be great literature. What is exceptional about the poetry associated
with the World and Della Crusca is that it became a sensation, and
the actors involved in the network were all keen to capitalize on that
sensation. Like any form of pop culture, it was subject to criticism and
complaint, but such cavils are forms of misreading. I propose instead
that the Della Cruscans were not a coterie of pretentious poets, as
many contemporary detractors thought them, or a serious literary9780230100251_03_ch01.indd 349780230100251_03_ch01.indd 34 12/31/2010 4:20:11 PM12/31/2010 4:20:11 PM
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