The very identity of the poet was in question: should such a writer be “professional,” regularly producing income-yielding volumes, or a leisured gentleman or lady, writing only to satisfy the muses with no thought of payment? In this chapter, I observe the growing split between “professional” and “amateur” writing characteristic of Seward’s lifetime. Ezell cites the vogue for “series” of publications said to constitute the “classics” but often reflecting the mere availability of certain texts as a phenomenon that has persuaded too many succeeding critics to accept eighteenth-century publishers’ decisions regarding the British “canon” ( Social Authorship 136–39).
But Seward’s generation was already entangled in such questions as whether the best poetry required critical elucidation and whether a broad audience indicated lack of merit or the reverse. Paradoxically, however, as Poovey notes, Wordsworth’s literary reputation depended on the wide sales of inexpensive editions of his poetry (290–98). Poovey concentrates on William Wordsworth’s campaign in the following century to convince the public that poetry had an aesthetic value discernible only to elite readers. 3 In doing so, she participated in a national trend: as Mary Poovey observes in Genres of the Credit Economy, the late eighteenth century witnessed efforts to discriminate between “Literature” and other forms of writing (285–335).
Whether viewed as an “amateur” or a “professional,” Seward cherished an exalted notion of the poet and consequently held fellow writers to exacting standards.
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2 Finally, my readings of Seward’s Batheaston poems show how their models, structures, and sound effects challenge the twenty-first-century reader while demonstrating the national concerns of provincial literary spheres, such as that at Batheaston, and Seward’s professional perspective as she used patronage for nonfinancial motives. 1 Seward’s career illuminates the distinction between amateurism and professionalism in an era when the latter did not necessarily connote a certain financial condition, gender, or social position. Once she was ready to commit her poems to print publication, she could reasonably hope that she might achieve national recognition, a topic I take up in the next chapter, owing to the wide circulation of books and periodicals. Seward opted to share her early verse in manuscript as well as to perform them at Bath-easton, contexts that informed her poems’ structures, content, and sounds. As Ezell also observes, provincial writers were slow to adopt print publication, often preferring manuscript publication not because they were less skilled but because they were wary of the commercial context or were interested in an interactive readership, among other reasons (121). Seward’s career can be seen as a next-generation version of Alexander Pope’s, which, as Margaret Ezell has reminded us, was typical of a poet’s trajectory in the early eighteenth century in that his poems circulated both in manuscript and print ( Social Authorship, 60–83). I offer several explanations for Seward’s choice to begin her career in Batheaston rather than in London. Seward’s decision to compete in Lady Miller’s poetry contests before seeing her work into print, besides illustrating the nature and values of her poetry, invites us to ponder her relationship to the rapidly evolving profession of writing. They position her as a poet skilled in the century’s principles and techniques, ready to brave contemporary professional criticism. These poems, although neglected when not maligned by later critics, demonstrate that Seward entered the public marketplace as a polished poet, ready to please her anticipated readers. In this chapter, I examine the poems Seward chose to publish in her collected works (1809) from among those she presented to her first, semi-public audience, the guests at Lady Anna Miller’s Batheaston salons. CHAPTER TWO “Fancy’s Shrine” Lady Miller’s Batheaston Poetical AssembliesĪnna Seward participated in a local poetic coterie and circulated poems in manuscript, but she did not publish in print until 1780, a transitional time for poetry, publishing, and the professionalization of writing (Barnard, Anna Seward 110, 122).
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