Poems.

by Poetical Writer. Mary Robinson

Mary Robinson, nee Darby (1757-1800) was an English poet and novelist. During her lifetime she was known as 'the English Sappho'. She was also known for her role as Perdita (heroine of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale) in 1779 and as the first public mistress of George IV. After seeing her as Perdita, and declaring himself enraptured with her, the Prince of Wales, offered Mary Robinson twenty thousand pounds to become his mistress. However, he soon tired of her and abandoned her after a year, refusing to pay the money. Her reputation was destroyed by the affair, and she could no longer find work as an actress. Eventually, the Crown agreed to pay Robinson five thousand pounds, in return for the Prince's love letters to her. In 1783, at the age of 26, Robinson suffered a mysterious illness that left her partially paralyzed. From the late 1780s, she became distinguished for her poetry. In addition to poems, she wrote six novels, two plays, a feminist treatise, and an autobiographical manuscript that was incomplete at the time of her death.

270 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1775

Reviews

[Lawrence · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly these poems are not very good! A lot of very vague and repetitive praises for virtue and denunciation of fashionable vice — a theme I’ll be curious to see develop in her works, given that she seems to spend much of her life quite interested in fashionable vice. Some interesting moments include a shepherd who dies in her first pastoral sequence, “written on the outside of a hermitage” and “letter to a friend on leaving town” for the contrast between vague and concrete. I feel like I can see why this volume didn’t sell well and wasn’t reprinted.