(Felicia Hemans (1793-1835), one of the most influential a...)
Felicia Hemans (1793-1835), one of the most influential and widely-read poets of the nineteenth century, wrote Records of Woman in 1828 at the height of her long career. In the series, which includes nineteen poems about exemplary lives, Hemans explores what it means to be a woman, challenging traditional beliefs while at the same time reinforcing persistent stereotypes. Her work celebrates the lives, events, and imagined thoughts of unremembered women from different cultures and time periods whose deeds show nobility of spirit and inner strength. In her introduction, Paula Feldman examines how Hemans's poetry shaped and was shaped by nineteenth-century literary tastes, and she reconsiders the aesthetic value of Hemans's work and the current understanding of the nature of Romanticism.
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( This parallel text edition of Felicia Hemanss importa...)
This parallel text edition of Felicia Hemanss important dramatic poem presents the 1823 publication alongside a transcription of the original manuscript, offering a unique glimpse at her compositional process. Situated in medieval Spain, in the heat of Moorish-Christian conflicts, this complex political tragedy is both a rich historical narrative and a commentary by the poet on her own post-Napoleonic world. The Broadview edition also includes selections of related poetry, excerpts from source texts, and contemporary reviews.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1551114429/?tag=2022091-20
( Felicia Hemans was the most widely read woman poet in ...)
Felicia Hemans was the most widely read woman poet in the nineteenth-century English-speaking world. Broadviews edition shows why she was one of the few standard poets to be found in middle-class homes on both sides of the Atlantic, despite being routinely disparaged as a merely feminine poet. Included here is poetry representative of her entire career, from often-anthologized works, such as The Homes of England and Casabianca, to several long poems in their entirety, such as The Forest Sanctuary. Also included are selections of her prose and letters, a comprehensive introduction, and selections of views and reviews showing her changing and controversial place in culture into the twentieth century. All selections are edited, annotated, and introduced.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1551111373/?tag=2022091-20
Hemans was born on September 25, 1793 in Liverpool, England, the fourth of six Browne children (three boys and three girls) to survive infancy. Her father, George Browne, of Irish extraction, was a merchant in Liverpool, and her mother, whose maiden name was Wagner, was the daughter of the Austrian and Tuscan consul at Liverpool.
Felicia's education was desultory. Books of chronicle and romance, and every kind of poetry, she read with avidity; and she also studied Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and German. She played both harp and piano.
Felicia's first poems, dedicated to the Prince of Wales, were published in Liverpool in 1808, when she was only fourteen, arousing the interest of no less a person than Percy Bysshe Shelley, who briefly corresponded with her. From 1831 onwards, she lived in Dublin, where her younger brother had settled, and her poetic output continued. Her major collections, including The Forest Sanctuary (1825), Records of Woman and Songs of the Affections (1830) were immensely popular, especially with female readers. Her last books, sacred and profane, are the substantive Scenes and Hymns of Life and National Lyrics, and Songs for Music. She was by now a well-known literary figure, highly regarded by contemporaries such as Wordsworth, and with a popular following in the United States and the United Kingdom. When she died of dropsy, Wordsworth and Walter Savage Landor composed memorial verses in her honor. She is buried in St. Ann's Church, Dawson Street. Felicia Hemans's works appeared in nineteen individual books during her lifetime. After her death in 1835, they were republished widely, usually as collections of individual lyrics and not the longer, annotated works and integrated series that made up her books. Despite her illustrious admirers, her stature as a serious poet gradually declined, partly due to her success in the literary marketplace. Her poetry was considered morally exemplary, and was often assigned to schoolchildren; as a result, Hemans came to be seen a poet for children rather than taken seriously on the basis of her entire body of work.
( This parallel text edition of Felicia Hemanss importa...)
(Felicia Hemans (1793-1835), one of the most influential a...)
( Felicia Hemans was the most widely read woman poet in ...)
In 1812, Hemans married Captain Alfred Hemans, an Irish army officer some years older than herself. The marriage took her away from Wales, to Daventry in Northamptonshire until 1814. During their first six years of marriage, Felicia gave birth to five sons, including engineer G. W. Hemans and Charles Isidore Hemans, and then the couple separated.
She was an English writer and composer.
