A Century of Sonnets The Romantic-Era Revival 1750-1850

by Feldman, Paula R.; Robinson, Daniel

• ISBN13: 9780195115611
• ISBN10: 0195115619
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-05-06
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

A Century of Sonnets is a striking reminder that some of the best known and most well-respected poems of the Romantic era were sonnets. It presents the broad and rich context of such favorites as Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymanidas," John Keats's "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer," and William Wordsworth's "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge" by tracing the sonnet revival in England from its beginning in the hands of Thomas Edwards and Charlotte Smith to its culmination in the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Expertly edited by Paula R. Feldman and Daniel Robinson, this volume is the first in modern times to collect the sonnets of the Romantic period--many never before published in the twentieth century--and contains nearly five hundred examples composed between 1750 and 1850 by 81 poets, nearly half of them women. A Century of Sonnets includes in their entirety such important but difficult to find sonnet sequences as William Wordsworth's The River Duddon , Mary Robinson's Sappho and Phaon , and Robert Southey's Poems on the Slave Trade, along with Browning's enduring classic, Sonnets from the Portuguese. The poems collected here express the full sweep of human emotion and explore a wide range of themes, including love, grief, politics, friendship, nature, art, and the enigmatic character of poetry itself. Indeed, for many poets the sonnet form elicited their strongest work. A Century of Sonnets shows us that far from disappearing with Shakespeare and the English Renaissance, the sonnet underwent a remarkable rebirth in the Romantic period, giving us a rich body of work that continues to influence poets even today.

Author Biography

Paula R. Feldman, Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, is editor of British Women Poets of the Romantic Era and coeditor of The Journals of Mary Shelly and Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices. She lives in Columbia, South Carolina. Daniel Robinson is Assistant Professor of English at Widener University, where he teaches literature of the Romantic period and the eighteenth century. He lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xxi
Introduction	3	(18)
Suggested Further Reading	21	(2)
Editorial Principles	23	(2)
Thomas Edwards (1699-1757)
1. On a Family-Picture	25	(1)
2. `Tongue-doughty pedant'	25	(1)
Thomas Gray (1716-71)
3. On the Death of Mr. Richard West	26	(1)
Thomas Warton (1728-90)
4. `While summer-suns o'er the gay prospect played'	27	(1)
5. To the River Lodon	27	(1)
John Codrington Bampfylde (1754-96)
6. `As when, to one who long hath watched'	28	(1)
7. Written at a Farm	28	(1)
8. On a Frightful Dream	28	(1)
9. On Christmas	29	(1)
Charlotte Smith (1749-1806)
10. `The partial Muse has from my earliest hours'	29	(1)
11. Written at the Close of Spring	30	(1)
12. To a Nightingale	30	(1)
13. To the Moon	31	(1)
14. To the South Downs	31	(1)
15. To Sleep	31	(1)
16. Supposed to be Written by Werter	32	(1)
17. By the Same. To Solitude	32	(1)
18. By the Same	32	(1)
19. From Petrarch	33	(1)
20. `Blest is yon shepherd, on the turf reclined'	33	(1)
21. Written on the Sea Shore.--October, 1784	34	(1)
22. To the River Arun	34	(1)
23. To Melancholy. Written on the Banks of the Arun, October 1785	34	(1)
24. To the Naiad of the Arun	35	(1)
25. `Should the lone wanderer, fainting on his way'	35	(1)
26. To Night	35	(1)
27. Written in the Churchyard at Middleton in Sussex	36	(1)
28. The Captive Escaped in the Wilds of America. Addressed to the Hon. Mrs. O'Neill	36	(1)
29. To Dependence	37	(1)
30. Written in September 1791, During a Remarkable Thunder Storm	37	(1)
31. On Being Cautioned Against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea	37	(1)
32. `Where the wild woods and pathless forests frown'	38	(1)
33. The Sea View	38	(1)
34. Written Near a Port on a Dark Evening	39	(1)
35. Written at Bignor Park in Sussex, in August, 1799	39	(1)
Samuel Egerton Brydges (1762-1837)
36. On Dreams	39	(1)
37. `No more by cold philosophy confined'	40	(1)
William Hayley (1745-1820)
38. To Mrs. Hayley, On her Voyage to America. 1784	40	(1)
Mary Hays (1760-1843)
39. `Ah! let not hope fallacious, airy, wild'	41	(1)
Helen Maria Williams (1761?-1827)
40. To Twilight	42	(1)
41. To Hope	42	(1)
42. To the Moon	43	(1)
43. To the Strawberry	43	(1)
44. To the Curlew	43	(1)
45. To the Torrid Zone	44	(1)
46. To the White Bird of the Tropic	44	(1)
William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850)
47. To a Friend	45	(1)
48. `Languid, and sad, and slow'	45	(1)
49. Written at Tinemouth, Northumberland, after a Tempestuous Voyage	45	(1)
50. Written at Bamborough Castle	46	(1)
51. To the River Wensbeck	46	(1)
52. To the River Tweed	47	(1)
53. To the River Itchin, Near Winton	47	(1)
54. On Dover Cliffs. July 20, 1787	47	(1)
55. To the River Cherwell	48	(1)
Thomas Russell (1762-88)
56. `Oxford, since late I left thy peaceful shore'	48	(1)
57. To Valclusa	49	(1)
58. `Dear Babe, whose meaning by fond looks expressed'	49	(1)
59. To the Spider	49	(1)
60. To the Owl	50	(1)
Mary Locke (fl. 1791-1816)
61. `I hate the Spring in parti-colored vest'	50	(1)
Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823)
62. To the Visions of Fancy	51	(1)
63. Sun-Rise: A Sonnet	51	(1)
64. Night	52	(1)
65. `Now the bat circles on the breeze of eve'	52	(1)
66. Storied Sonnet	53	(1)
67. To the Bat	53	(1)
Anna Maria Jones (1748-1829)
68. To Echo	54	(1)
69. To the Moon	54	(1)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
70-80. Sonnets on Eminent Characters
70. No. I. To the Honorable Mr. Erskine	55	(1)
71. No. II. Burke	55	(1)
72. No. III. Priestley	56	(1)
73. No. IV La Fayette	56	(1)
74. No. V. Kosciusko	57	(1)
75. No. VI. Pitt	57	(1)
76. No. VII. To the Rev. W. L. Bowles	58	(1)
77. No. VIII. Mrs. Siddons	58	(1)
78. No. IX. To William Godwin, Author of Political Justice	59	(1)
79. No. X. To Robert Southey	59	(1)
80. No. XI. To Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Esq.	59	(1)
81. To the Autumnal Moon	60	(1)
82. On a Discovery Made Too Late	60	(1)
83. To the River Otter	61	(1)
84. To a Friend, Who Asked How I Felt, When the Nurse First Presented My Infant to Me	61	(1)
85-87. Sonnets, Attempted in the Manner of `Contemporary Writers'
85. I. (`Pensive, at eve, on the hard world I mused')	61	(1)
86. II. To Simplicity	62	(1)
87. III. On a Ruined House in a Romantic Country	62	(1)
88. To W. L. Esq. While He Sung a Song to Purcell's Music	62	(1)
89. Fancy in Nubibus. Or The Poet in the Clouds	63	(1)
90. Work Without Hope	63	(1)
91. The Old Man's Sigh. A Sonnet	64	(1)
92. Life	64	(1)
93. Pantisocracy	64	(1)
Amelia Opie (1769-1853)
94. To Winter	65	(1)
95. On the Approach of Autumn	65	(1)
John Thelwall (1764-1834)
96. To Tyranny	66	(1)
97. To Ancestry	66	(1)
98. The Vanity of National Grandeur	67	(1)
99. On the Rapid Extension of the Suburbs	67	(1)
Mary Julia Young (fl. 1789-1808)
100. To Dreams	68	(1)
101. Anxiety	68	(1)
102. Friendship	69	(1)
103. To Time	69	(1)
104. To My Pen	70	(1)
105. On an Early Spring	70	(1)
Charles Lamb (1775-1834)
106. `Was it some sweet device of faery land'	71	(1)
107. `We were two pretty babes'	71	(1)