«I’le to My Self, and to My Muse Be True»

In their verse, many British women composing poetry in the long eighteenth century wrote about and reflected on the very process of writing itself. In doing so, they often imitated and adapted specific poetic topoi, motifs, and generic patterns established by their male predecessors and peers including, among others, Homer, Ovid, and Juvenal, Dryden, Pope, and Swift. In exploring the phallic connotations of ‘pen and ink’, in invoking the assistance of a personal muse, in writing sharp and effective ‘self-satires’, and in identifying themselves with Philomela, the mythological persona of the nightingale, women like Anne Finch, Mary Chudleigh, Sarah Dixon, Mary Leapor, Anna Letitia Barbauld, and Charlotte Smith fashioned and authorized themselves as (female) poets.