'Saturday' - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

‘How am I changed! alas! how am I grown

A frightful spectre, to myself unknown!’

‘Saturday’ (published 1747)

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762)

Portrait of Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu by Johnathan Richardson,
1725 (held at Sandon Hall, Stafford).

If you’ve never heard of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu then you’ve seriously been missing out – as well as being a talented poet and writer, she also played a key role in dispelling British suspicion of inoculation against small-pox and thus ultimately contributed to the preservation of countless lives. Although her father had wanted her to marry a wealthy heir called Clotworthy Skeffington, Lady Mary instead eloped with the lawyer and MP Edward Wortley Montagu in 1712. Later, she accompanied her husband during his appointment as ambassador to Constantinople at the heart of what was then the Ottoman Empire, and it was during her time here that she first learnt of the Turkish practice of inoculation. The subject was of particular importance to Montagu, for she had herself survived a potentially fatal case of small pox in 1715.

The poem I’ll be looking at today forms one of Montagu’s Six Town Eclogues, a series of short poems in which there is one for every day of the week except Sunday. The series was written around 1715-16 but was not officially published until 1747 (three of them were pirated by the publisher Edmund Curll in 1716, but ‘Saturday’ was not one of these). The poem is written from the perspective of a society lady whose beauty has been affected by small pox, and so it begins:

The wretched Flavia on her couch reclined,

Thus breathed the anguish of a wounded mind. 

A glass reversed in her right hand she bore,

For now she shunned the face she sought before.

   ‘How am I changed! alas! how am I grown

A frightful spectre, to myself unknown!

(lines 1-6)

The shift from external narrator to the actual voice of Flavia here allows Montagu to convey the psychological impact of the physical scarring.  Her appearance irrevocable altered, Flavia is now ‘to [her]self unknown’, and the rest of the poem is narrated from her perspective as she is overwhelmed by the loss of self-worth that she equates with the loss of her beauty.  In particular, this worth is defined through the influence her good-looks had given her over men from many different walks of life.  She lists her former triumphs:

‘For me the patriot has the House [i.e. the Houses of Parliament] forsook,

And left debates to catch a passing look;

For me the soldier has soft verses writ;

For me the beau has aimed to be a wit.

For me the wit to nonsense was betrayed;

[…]

The bashful squire, touched with a wish unknown,

Has dared to speak with spirit not his own:

Fired by one wish, all did alike adore;

Now beauty’s fled, and lovers are no more.

(lines 28-32, & lines 37-40)

Remember that the poem’s opening highlighted that Flavia perceives her appearance as indistinguishable from her identity when it stated that she is now to ‘[her]self unknown’. The ‘me’ in these lines does not so much refer to Flavia herself but to her physical features. It is her beauty which the politician wants ‘to catch a passing look’ of, and it is for her beauty that ‘the soldier has soft verses writ’.  No hint is given in the poem of Flavia possessing any other qualities beyond her physical attractiveness. We are told how in the past Flavia has gazed into her dressing room mirror:  

 While hours unheeded passed in deep debate,

How curls should fall, or where a patch to place

 (lines 48-49) [just in case you don’t know, the ‘patch’ referred to here is a beauty patch, usually a small fancy shape in black that was intended to draw attention to the most attractive feature of the face]

Later in the poem Flavia throws spiteful shade upon women she deems ‘meaner beauties’ (meaning those less beautiful than she had been) claiming that ‘Tis to my ruin all your charms ye owe’, and that if ‘pitying heaven’ would return her to her former glory her now successful rivals ‘still might move unthought of and unseen’ (around line 60). But this is actually the closest the poem comes to allowing Flavia an opportunity to expose herself to ridicule.  Montague’s crucial, unspoken question here is whether Flavia has allowed herself to be defined by her appearance, or whether it is the everyday sexism of her time that has caused her to equate her personal value solely with her physical appearance. 

Hints as to the answer to this question are given in various subtle ways throughout the poem, for example when Flavia begs her servants to remove the portrait of herself before her illness:

Far from my sight that killing picture bear,

The face disfigure, or the canvas tear!

That picture, which with pride I used to show,

The lost resemblance but upbraids me now.

(lines 43-46)

Perceiving herself to be mocked by the portrait of her former self, the choice of the term ‘upbraid[ing]’ here indicates Flavia’s assumption of blame for the situation, as if she herself is somehow at fault.  This is of course totally untrue, and having suffered an illness like small pox she is genuinely lucky to still be alive; but the fact that she even unconsciously absorbs blame or fault for what has happened to her contains within it the implication that it is somehow a duty or responsibility for her to look beautiful.  Her success or failure as an individual, her whole worth as a person, is defined by her appearance.  As the poem draws to its conclusion, the problem that Flavia now feels she faces is the inability to reclaim a life for herself in a society that prioritises surface appearance over substance. It is not just her sense of identity which she has lost, but her capacity to influence others and be respected as an individual.  Flavia exclaims:

But oh, how vain, how wretched is the boast

Of beauty faded, and of empire lost!

What now is left but weeping to deplore

My beauty fled, and empire now no more?

(lines 61-64)

The syntactic repetition of the clause structure – ‘Of beauty faded […] of empire lost’ – solidifies the link between the two terms still further.  As a woman, Flavia’s power has been derived from her appearance. It’s especially worth keeping in mind here that this pessimistic self-expulsion from society is not, of course, the approach Montagu took in her own life – the very existence of this poem (written after Montagu’s own experience of small pox) obviously belies the sense of uselessness that Flavia has fallen prey to here. All that Flavia believes is left for her is to ‘Forsake mankind, and bid the world adieu’ since she believes she is now fit only for the mockery of those men who previously worshipped her beauty.  Although she refers briefly to some visits from male admirers come to console her, she is painfully conscious of what their eventual attitude towards her will be when their predictions of her swift recovery and resumption of beauty are not fulfilled: ‘Men mock the idol of their former vow’, she notes darkly. What Montagu draws attention to here is actually that Flavia is only worth less because of her illness if the society in which she lives considers her to be so. There is also an implicit critique of a society in which women like Flavia are made to feel that physical beauty is the only way in which they can contribute. That Montagu was able to use her own experience to fuel her passion for promoting better standards of health-care owed much to the privileged position she occupied, and to her own determination to use that position to best effect.  As her most recent biographer Isobel Grundy notes, ‘Lady Mary had more of a life outside her family than most women of her class’ (p. 261).

You can find this poem:

http://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/works/o5152-w0110.shtml#o5152-w0116

(Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive – a nice free copy with added notes and information)

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44766/town-eclogues-saturday-the-small-pox

(Poetry Foundation – a nice free copy)

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ‘Saturday’, from Six Town Eclogues, in Roger Lonsdale (ed.), The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pages 143-6(A fantastic collection of poetry, highly recommended!!)

You can find out more about Lady Mary Wortley Montagu:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Mary_Wortley_Montagu

(Wikipedia – often a useful first stop for general information)

http://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/authors/pers00001.shtml

(Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive – includes links to many of Montagu’s poems, and a short biographical note; also details editions of her poems and writings in case you want to delve further)

Resources used in writing this blogpost:

Paula Backscheider, Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005)

'An Essay on Woman' - Mary Leapor

‘...with ten thousand follies to her charge

Unhappy woman’s but a slave at large.’

Mary Leapor (1722-1746)

‘An Essay on Woman’ (written before 1746)

Although her life was cut tragically short by an attack of measles at the age of 24, Mary Leapor left behind a splendid array of excellent poetry. One of her most brilliant works is ‘An Essay on Woman’, a fiery feminist attack on the narrow role allotted to women in eighteenth-century British society. It begins with delicious sarcasm by playing directly into the stereotypes:

   Woman, a pleasing but a short-lived flower,

Too soft for business and too weak for power:

A wife in bondage, or neglected maid;

Despised, if ugly; if she’s fair, betrayed.

‘Tis wealth alone inspires every grace,

And calls the raptures to her plenteous face.

The situation of women is, she suggests, impossible: they are ‘too soft’ and ‘too weak’ for any useful work, but their sole asset of beauty is only ever ‘short-lived’. Good-looks are also a curse leading to the ‘bondage’ of marriage or the betrayal of a seducer, but without them a woman will only be ‘despised’. The only way a woman can gain social advantage is through marriage, and thus the archetypal woman herself is presented as only interested in securing ‘wealth’ in a future partner, since it is this ‘alone’ which ‘calls the raptures to her plenteous face’. A catalogue of attractive feminine attributes follows, raising this model woman to the level of a ‘sparkling Venus’: until Leapor warns, marriage ‘Dissolves her triumphs, sweeps her charms away, / And turns the goddess to her native clay’ (line 10 & lines 17-18).  The total potential of her life fulfilled, there is nothing left for woman to do but to decline.

Examples of classical women are then used to further demonstrate the hopeless limitations of women’s position in society, for example the clever Pamphilia:

 Pamphilia’s wit who does not strive to shun,

Like death’s infection or a dog-day’s sun?

The damsels view her with malignant eyes,

The men are vexed to find a nymph so wise:

And wisdom only serves to make her know

The keen sensation of superior woe.

Whilst the ‘men’ here are described through a term that solidly embraces their gendered humanity, the woman is denoted as a ‘nymph’, an idealised and ethereal being derived from classical mythology (typically female and very attractive).  If Leapor’s vexed ‘men’, like the Flavia’s male admirers in Montagu’s ‘Saturday’, are only interested in a woman being beautiful then for them intelligence in a woman would only be an unnecessary and thus irksome addition.  The point of the poem is not that Leapor herself believes woman to be ‘a pleasing but a short-lived flower’; rather it is an expression of profound frustration that this is the function to which they are limited. It’s a frustration with which Leapor would have been only too familiar, as her own mother had felt obliged to try to curb her poetic talent as a child because of fears this kind of clever behaviour would only make her a social outcast (in Leapor’s case not just because of her gender but also because of her working-class background).

The final section of Leapor’s Essay on Woman represents a weary capitulation as she feels herself to be ultimately powerless in combat against such firm and deeply held social oppression of women.  She writes:

[…] whether sunk in avarice or pride,

A wanton virgin or a starving bride;

Or wond’ring crowds attend her charming tongue,

Or, deemed an idiot, ever speaks the wrong;

Though nature armed us for the growing ill

With fraudful cunning and a headstrong will;

Yet, with ten thousand follies to her charge,

Unhappy woman’s but a slave at large. (lines 53-60)

The symmetrical balance of ‘wanton virgin’ with ‘starving bride’ is a powerful expression of these terms as ultimate antithetical signifiers.  A woman is either one or the other, married or unmarried, her whole usefulness and function defined by her marital status.  Addressing the stereotypical ‘cunning’ and wilfulness of women Leapor suggests that this was nature’s way of ‘arm[ing] us’ against social oppression.  Yet in spite of such ‘follies’, Leapor sadly admits, ‘Unhappy woman’s but slave at large’.  Always defined by their relationships with men, women are here allowed only a delusion of freedom.

Obliged to work as a kitchen maid during her teenage years, Leapor was keenly aware of the restrictions she faced because of both her gender and her class. Fortunately for us, she did not let this stop her from writing poetry, and when she later returned home to keep house for her widowed father the efforts of her new friend Bridget Fremantle meant that the publication of her poetry became a real possibility. The production of  two-volume anthology was funded via subscription publishing, a system through which interested patrons could basically preorder one or more copies of a work before it ever went to the press, with the money then being used to fund the printing costs.  Sadly Leapor herself died of measles before their plans could come to fruition but, in accordance with Leapor’s dying request, her poems were published after her death ‘for the benefit of her father’.  The posthumous subscription garnered almost 600 signatories.    

 

You can find this poem:

You can find scans of Leapor’s original volumes of poetry on Archive.org here:
https://archive.org/details/poemsuponseveral01leapiala (Volume 1)

https://archive.org/details/poemsuponseveral02leapiala (Volume 2)

Modern typed versions of some of Leapor’s poetry are available on this fab free resource, Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive. A short biographical note is also included, along with some information about additional reference works if you want to find out more:

http://eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/authors/pers00154.shtml

Sources used in this blog post:

Roger Lonsdale (ed.), The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

(This fantastic resource should be on the shelf of every eighteenth-century poetry enthusiast!)

'The Seasons' - James Thomson

Gradual sinks the breeze

Into a perfect calm; that not a breath
Is heard to quiver through the closing woods,
Or rustling turn the many twinkling leaves
Of aspen tall.  The uncurling floods diffused
In glassy breadth, seem, through delusive lapse,
Forgetful of their course.  ‘Tis silence all,
And pleasing expectation.  Herds and flocks
Drop the dry sprig, and, mute imploring, eye
The falling verdure.  Hush’d in short suspense,
The plumy people streak their wings with oil,
To throw the lucid moisture trickling off;
And wait the approaching sign to strike, at once,
Into the general choir.  E’en mountains, vales,
And forests seem impatient to demand
The promised sweetness.  Man superior walks
Amid the glad creation, musing praise,
And looking lively gratitude.  At last,
The clouds consign their treasures to the fields;
And, softly shaking on the dimpled pool
Prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow
In large effusion o’er the freshen’d world.
The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard,
By such as wander through the forest-walks,
Beneath the umbrageous multitude of leaves.
But who can hold the shade, while Heaven descends
In universal bounty, shedding herbs,
And fruits, and flowers on Nature’s ample lap?

Swift Fancy fired anticipates their growth;

And, while the milky nutriment distils,
Beholds the kindling country colour round.
   Thus all day long the full-distended clouds
Indulge their genial stores, and well-shower’d earth
Is deep enrich’d with vegetable life;
Till, in the western sky, the downward sun
Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush
Of broken clouds, gay-shifting to his beam.
The rapid radiance instantaneous strikes
The illumined mountain; through the forest streams,
Shakes on the floods, and, in a yellow mist,
Far-smoking o’er the interminable plain,
In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.
Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around.
Full swell the woods; their every music wakes,
Mix’d in wild concert with the warbling brooks
Increased, the distant bleatings of the hills,

Engraved title-page for 'Spring' in the 1876
illustrated edition of Thomson's Seasons 

The hollow lows responsive from the vales,
Whence, blending all, the sweeten’d zephyr springs.
Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cloud,
Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal bow
Shoots up immense, and every hue unfolds,
In fair proportion, running from the red,
To where the violet fades into the sky.
Here, awful Newton, the dissolving clouds
Form, fronting on the sun, thy showery prism;
And, to the sage-instructed eye, unfold
The various twine of light, by thee disclosed
From the white mingling maze.  Not so the boy:
He wondering views the bright enchantment bend,
Delightful, o’er the radiant fields, and runs To catch the falling glory; but amazed
Beholds the amusive arch before him fly,
Then vanish quite away.

(Excerpt from ‘Spring’)

The Seasons James Thomson (1700-1748)
1728-30



Engraved frontispiece for 'Spring' from the 1876
illustrated edition of Thomson's Seasons.

You might be wondering why today’s quotation is so long.  Well, quite simply it’s because this is something of a tricky poem to get hold of (and I didn't want folks put off reading it by its eulsiveness).  Published in 1730, James Thomsons’s Seasons would have a profound effect on English Literature throughout the remainder of the eighteenth century.  Sadly, however, like many great eighteenth-century poets, his works are not always remembered today.  Indeed, my attention was only drawn to this talented poet and his work through my investigations into pre-chapter quotation, since extracts from Thomson’s Seasons frequently appear in the works of Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe (whose novels I am currently researching).  It’s a fantastic example of how an interest in one thing can stimulate a love of something else in literary studies!

Divided into four sections, each corresponding to a specific season, Thomson’s Seasons is a lush, and glorious poem.  It’s also rather long, so for the purposes of this blog post I’ll focus on the extract I’ve typed up above.  This section is taken from ‘Spring’, and narrates the approach and arrival of a brief spring shower, finishing with the inevitable rainbow splashed across the sky.  Thus it begins with a sense of anticipation: ‘‘Tis silence all, / And pleasing expectation’.  The herds stop their grazing, and ‘The plumy people [the birds] streak their wings with oil’ in preparation for the forthcoming rain.  Importantly, the rain is also seen as a good thing here as ‘E’en mountains, vales, / And forests seem impatient to demand / The promised sweetness’ that the rain will bring.

Finally ‘The clouds consign their treasures to the fields’, and the world is ‘freshen’d’.  In just three lines, Thomson forms an exquisite and evocative image of wandering beneath the trees as the rain falls overhead:

 
‘The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard,
By such as wander through the forest-walks, Beneath the umbrageous multitude of leaves.’

(I had to look up what ‘umbrageous’ means, so just in case you’re not sure either it means ‘shady’, or ‘shaded’.  Good word to use at parties, and in crosswords.).  Yet neither is this just a romantic description of the countryside: there’s a practical side to it too.  This ‘universal bounty’ or ‘milky nutriment’ will call to life ‘herbs, And fruits, and flowers’; that the rain also causes ‘the kindling country [to] colour round’ is simply an added bonus.  It’s like when you think of how vibrantly green the beautiful hills of Wales always look, because of the rain from the mountains.  Here too, the rain is bringing out all the glorious colours of nature.

In Thomson’s poem, the rain lasts ‘all day long’, spreading its goodness around until the ‘well-shower’d earth / Is deep enrich’d with vegetable life’.  Only as the day draws to a close does the sun peek out ‘effulgent’ or radiant from the clouds.  It’s sunset, and the light ‘instantaneous strikes / The illumined mountain’, glowing ‘in a yellow mist’ as it ‘In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems’ of all the settled raindrops clinging to the plants.  Beautiful, isn’t it?  And then, ‘Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around’, and the birds sing as in the woods ‘every music wakes’ to blend with ‘the distant bleatings’ of sheep and the ‘hollow lows’ of cattle in the valleys.  And crowning all, a rainbow appears:

Engraving from 'Spring' in the 1876 illustrated
edition of Thomson's Seasons.

‘Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cloud,
Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal bow
Shoots up immense, and every hue unfolds,
In fair proportion, running from the red,
To where the violet fades into the sky.’



The reference to Newton alludes to his discovery of the refractive properties of light, in which a glass prism can separate ‘The various twine of light, […]/ From the white mingling maze’.  It’s a nice touch of science in this otherwise eminently poetic description.  But the last word goes not to Newton, but to the ‘wondering’ boy who longs to catch hold of the rainbow, which fades and pulls away as he tries to grasp it.  It’s a good image for the whole purpose of this kind of nature poetry, which aims to capture the intangible beauty of a world that must be experienced to be fully enjoyed and appreciated.  Through the words of Thomson, even those not fortunate enough to live in the countryside can capture a sense of that experience of the natural environment.

Happy Reading!!

You can find this poem…

…with great difficulty.  For some strange reason, it doesn’t seem to be in popular print anymore.  Which is a huge shame because it’s an absolute masterpiece!!  Here are a few suggestions of starting points, though:

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800951.txt

(Not perhaps the most attractive font in the world, but this does seem to include the whole poem!  And lots of other lovely Thomson material too!! Go forth and read folks!)

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-four-seasons-summer/
(This only contains one of Thomson’s four seasonal poems, ‘Summer’, but still it’s a start!)

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/james-thomson#about
(Poetry foundation: contains extracts from ‘Spring’ and ‘Winter’.  Also includes Thomson’s other famous poem, ‘Rule Britannia’, from which comes the seminal Last of the Proms anthem!)

There are also umerous old/antique copies of this poem available from second-hand retailers online and on the high street, some of them not too expensive.  There was an annotated Oxford edition of the text published in the 1980s, but even today this is priced for only the most enthusiastic of readers.

 

You can find out more about Thomson and his work:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Thomson-Scottish-poet-1700-1748
(A biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica that is shockingly short for such an important chap!  But it does have lots of the most important dates)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Thomson_(poet,_born_1700)

(Wikipedia – a rather longer biography, so might actually be more interesting than Britannica’s entry)

https://c18media.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/illustrations-and-the-seasons-by-james-thomson-2/

(Interesting blogpost about illustrated versions of Thomson’s poem)

https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/2014/12/03/james-thomson-and-the-romantics/

(Another nice blogpost about the influence of Thomson’s Seasons upon later romantic poets to whom time has been somewhat kinder, such as Coleridge)

https://www.waterstones.com/book/weatherland/alexandra-harris/9780500292655
(I believe there's also a rather nice section on Thomson in Alexandra Harris's fab new award-winning book Weatherland.  The link connects to Waterstones website, though of course it is available at all good bookstores, online and on the high street!! I haven't read this yet, but it's on my list... )

Copyright notice: All images used in this blogpost are the property of the author.  I'm happy for others to use these images for educational or research purposes free of charge, on condition that due acknowledgement is given.

'On Viewing Herself in the Glass' - Elizabeth Teft

“Was Nature angry when she formed my clay?
Or, urged by haste to finish, could not stay?
Or dressed with all her store some perfect she,
So lavish there, she’d none to spare for me?”

'On Viewing Herself in the Glass'

Elizabeth Teft

(1747)

It’s not a new thing, the experience of looking in a mirror and feeling somewhat dissatisfied with the view.  But in this wonderful mid-eighteenth-century sonnet, Elizabeth Teft succinctly constructs the perfect self-affirming response. 

It all begins with a blunt rhetorical question (that’s a question addressed to nobody, just like when you talk to your mirror in the morning): ‘Was Nature angry when she formed my clay?’  Basically, she’s trying to think of some reason why she doesn’t look as great as she’d like.  I especially enjoy the image of a kind of pre-life production line, with ‘Nature’ personified as some kind of creative artist who, having ‘dressed with all her store some perfect she’, has nothing pretty left in her workshop to give to the poet. 

There is an attempt at indifferent impartiality in the next line – ‘I oft converse with those she’s deemed to grace’ – or is she just being ever so slightly bitchy there?  Nature has, after all, only been ‘deemed to grace’ these women ‘With air and shape, fine mien, and charming face’.  The mirror, or glass, is personified here as it is able to hear these women address their own reflections with the rather affected exclamation that they are ‘strange, unpolished thing[s]’.  The poet is restrained though – she never ‘once upraid[s]’ because (here comes the slightly catty part again folks) ‘Conscious I am that transient charms will fade’.  In all fairness, though, she does allow that their ‘beauty gives delight’ and that it is ‘wond’rous pleasing to the sight’. 

Ultimately, the final couplet makes up for any peevish envy.  Since her looks are ‘defective’, she prays, please ‘Heaven, be so kind / With never-fading charms to dress my mind’.  And this is really what makes this such a perfect poem, as the poet accepts that even if she was beautiful it wouldn’t last forever, and through that acceptance learns to seek the higher and much more important goal of beautifying her mind.  In the tradition of sonnets, there is usually a change of tone after either the eighth or the twelfth line (technically known as the volta).  Here, the definite change before the final couplet becomes also a question of shifting the discussion from women’s bodies to a woman’s own individual journey to improve her mind.  Timeless, isn’t it?

You can read this poem:

http://www.poetrynook.com/poem/viewing-herself-glass

(Poetry Nook – a nice, free, online source of poetry.  Here’s where to start if you want to get reading this poem real fast!  This site also features some of Teft’s other poetry, all well worth a read!)

http://allpoetry.com/Elizabeth-Teft

(You can read two of Elizabeth Teft’s other poems here, though not the one the blog post is about)

Roger Lonsdale (ed.), Eighteenth-century women poets: an Oxford anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)

(available from numerous book shops online and on the high street: an truly masterful volume! Difficult to say how much I enjoy this book… ) 

About Elizabeth Teft

I was going to put a bit of biographical info here, but sadly, as Roger Lonsdale writes, ‘Little is known of “Elizabeth Teft of Lincoln’, except that she published Orinthia’s Miscellanies in London in 1747’.  But hey, that’s what researchers are for!  Maybe one day more information will be uncovered about this talented writer.