On 2024-03-26 10:18:39 +0000, Ross Clark said:
Yes, another 18th century English woman-of-letters. A "Romantic poet",
in fact (Wiki).
Known as the "Swan of Lichfield", where her clergyman father encouraged
her literary ambitions and provided well for her after his death.
Lichfield? I looked it up. It's in Staffordshire,
with a major cathedral. One of the reasons sometimes offered for the
weird location of Birmingham (no mountain, no lake, no coast, no
significant river, no coalmines) is that the non-conformists who
developed it wanted to put it as far as possible from the the influence
of the Church, hence as far as possible from Lichfield, Coventry and
Worcester.
and happens also to have been the birthplace of Samuel Johnson. Anna
Seward knew him, of course; Boswell consulted her when working on his
_Life_ of Johnson. She was unhappy with the way he treated the material
she had provided, feeling there was too much uncritical adulation of
Johnson.
Some detail here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150402153200/https://www2.shu.ac.uk/corvey/CW3journal/Issue%20one/barnard.html
--
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 37 years; mainly
in England until 1987.
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