The Poetry of Mary Robinson Form and Fame

The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Famepresents an ambitious poet with a keen sense of tradition and technique and a woman writer invested in her own poetic proteanism. Mary Robinson's formal strategies put her in direct competition with her male predecessors and contemporaries, a program she was particularly suited to fulfill given the sophisticated sense of form, genre, and gender that makes her one of the most accomplished poets of the 1790s. The definitive study of Robinson's poetry,The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fameoffers a comprehensive analysis of her work, studying her poems in the instant of their publicity and in their literary, social, and political contexts, while exploring Robinson's representation of herself as a poet, professional author, and erstwhile celebrity. Examining Mary Robinson in relation to such poets as Petrarch, Pope, Robert Merry ("Della Crusca"), Southey, and Coleridge, Daniel Robinson sheds new light on Robinson's importance to the literary scene of the 1790s and on poetic practice during the Romantic period.

Daniel Robinson is a Professor of English at Widener University. He is the editor of The Works of Mary Robinson and the author of William Wordsworth's Poetry. He co-edited Lyrical Ballads and Related Writings and A Century of Sonnets: The Romantic-Era Revival, 1750-1850 and his work has appeared in The Wordsworth Circle, Studies in Romanticism, and the European Romantic Review.