Elizabeth Singer Rowe

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(b. Sept. 11, 1674, Ilchester, Yeovil, Somerset – d. Feb. 20, 1737, Frome, Somerset )

Gender: F

Elizabeth Singer Rowe (1674-1737) was the daughter of a Dissenting minister, Walter Singer, and Elizabeth Portnell; her parents met while Singer was imprisoned for his faith. Her father arranged for her to receive a thorough education in literature, music and painting, and she was brought up in the Dissenting practice, which permitted women to play an active role in the church. After her mother’s death, the family moved to Somerset, where she was tutored in French and Italian by Henry Thynne, son of the first Viscount Weymouth of Longleat; this led to her lifelong friendship with Frances Thynne, the viscount’s daughter and later Countess of Hertford and Duchess of Somerset. In 1710 she married the poet Thomas Rowe, who was 13 years her junior, but he died in 1715. Rowe began writing at the age of twelve, and entered into a correspondence with John Dunton, a bookseller and author of The Ladies Dictionary London, 1696); from 1693-1696 she was the main contributor of poetry to Dunton’s journal The Athenian Mercury. Her poems, on religious and moralising subjects, were published in three collections between 1696 and 1717. Her most popular work was Friendship in Death, in Twenty letters from the Dead to the Living, which was first published in 1728 and went through nearly ninety editions by 1840. This was followed by Letters Moral and Entertaining (1729), which as well as fictional letters contained actual extracts from her correspondence with Lady Hertford. Rowe’s style was praised by Samuel Johnson and by Elizabeth Carter. George Ballard included her in his Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain: who have been celebrated for their writings or skill in the learned languages, arts and sciences (1750), presenting her as an ideal model of the virtuous and modest woman writer. John Duncombe also praised her in his Feminiad (1754).

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