Stapleton Martin

Anna Seward and Classic Lichfield (Dodo Press) Stapleton Martin

Anna Seward (1747-1809) was an English poet, often called the Swan of Lichfield. She was the elder daughter of Thomas Seward (1708-1790), prebendary of Lichfield and Salisbury, and author. Born at Eyam in Derbyshire, she passed nearly all her life in Lichfield, beginning at an early age to write poetry partly at the instigation of Erasmus Darwin. Author of Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional (1760), her verses include elegies and sonnets, and she also wrote a poetical novel, Louisa (1792) and a biography, Memoirs of the Life of Dr Darwin (1804). Between 1775 and 1781, Seward was a guest and participant at the salon held by Anna Miller at Batheaston. It was here that Seward's talent was recognised and her work published in the annual volume of poems from the gatherings. Sir Walter Scott edited Seward's Poetical Works in three volumes (1810). To these he prefixed a memoir of the author, adding extracts from her literary correspondence. Her letters were published in six volumes by A. Constable as Letters of Anna Seward 1784-1807 (1811). A biography, Anna Seward and Classic Lichfield (1909) was written by Stapleton Martin (1846-1922).