Anna Seward (December 12, 1747 – March 25, 1809) was an English poet, often called the "Swan of Lichfield." Seward was the elder daughter of Thomas Seward (1708-1790), prebendary of Lichfield and Salisbury, and author. Born at Eyam in Derbyshire, she passed nearly all her life in Lichfield, beginning at an early age to write poetry partly at the instigation of Dr. Erasmus Darwin. Author of Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional (1760), her verses include elegies and sonnets, and she also wrote a poetical novel, Louisa, of which five editions were published. Seward's writings, which include a large number of letters, have been called commonplace: Horace Walpole said she had " no imagination, no novelty." She was praised, however, by Mary Scott in The Female Advocate (1774). Sir Walter Scott edited Seward's Poetical Works in three volumes (Edinburgh, 1810); to these he prefixed a memoir of the author, adding extracts from her literary correspondence. He declined, however, to edit the bulk of her letters, and these were published in six volumes by A. Constable as Letters of Anna Seward 1784-1807 (Edinburgh, 1811). Seward also wrote Memoirs of the Life of Dr Darwin (1804). There is a plaque to Anna [misspelled "Anne"] Seward in Lichfield Cathedral. See E. V. Lucas, A Swan and her Friends (1907); and S. Martin, Anna Seward and Classic Lichfield (1909).
References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- [1] Biography on Revolutionary Players website
