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Anna Seward: bottom row, 2nd from left; Engraving by J.W. Cook, 1825. Poetry. Seward began to write poetry early with encouragement from her father, a published poet, but against the wishes of her mother. When Anna was 16, her father revised his position, fearing she might become a "learned lady".
Born in Derbyshire, British Romantic poet and novelist Anna Seward was the daughter of a clergyman and the only one of four children to reach adulthood. Her close friend, Honora Sneyd, was adopted into the family and served as the muse for many of Seward’s poems.
Anna Seward (1742–1809), English poet, literary critic, and intellectual best known for the long poems Elegy on Captain Cook (1780) and Monody on Major Andre (1781). She fostered a close-knit network of friends and correspondents and drew the notice of writers prominent within the Romantic movement.
Seward drew early inspiration from John Milton, Alexander Pope, and William Shakespeare and, though she was a contemporary of the early Romantic poets, is considered a writer of the long eighteenth century. She was often known as the “Swan of Lichfield.” Seward died in Lichfield on March 25, 1809.
Oct 9, 2019 · Seward’s first well known poem was Elegy on Captain Cook (1780), published one year after the explorer’s death, in which she showed a close familiarity with Cook’s journals, themselves published in 1773 and 1777.
Anna Seward was an English Romantic poet who is remembered as the Swan of Lichfield. She was educated throughout her life, due to her family’s liberal views on education for women. She wrote poetry from a young age, much of which included elegies and sonnets.
Upon her death in 1809, Seward bequeathed her poetical works to Sir Walter Scott, who had them published with a memoir in three volumes in 1810. Though Scott declined to market her 12-volume manuscript of letters which she had meticulously revised for publication, the letters were printed by Archibald Constable in six volumes in 1811.
