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Patronage And Poetic Identity In Eighteenth-Century Laboring-Class Poetry: Mary Leapor, Ann Yearsley, And Janet Little, Kelly Joanne Hunnings

Theses

The purpose of this project is to shed light on three female laboring-class poets who have gone largely overlooked by scholars of eighteenth-century studies, Mary Leapor, Ann Yearsley, and Janet Little. This paper argues that when discussed together these poets exemplify the shift from Augustan models of intellectualism to proto-Romantic thought. Issues of literary patronage and trend are highlighted in this thesis as the laboring-class poetic tradition enjoyed a long vogue in the eighteenth-century. Chapter One offers a look in the literary marketplace of the period and what scholars have said about the subject of laboring-class writing so far. Chapters …