HEMANS, Felicity Dorothea.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Poems. First edition of this precocious start to Hemans's successful career, collecting her writing between the ages of 8 and 13. The publication brought her to the attention of Percy Bysshe Shelley, with whom she corresponded until her mother intervened, and was issued by the publishers of the politician William Roscoe, who she had first encountered in 1807.The collection was published under Hemans' maiden name Browne, as she was only 14 at the time of publication, and contains a list of 978 subscribers, including the Prince of Wales - the future George IV - and the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816). The volume's popularity opened the door to many publications during her lifetime, including two poems beginning "The boy stood on the burning deck" and "The stately homes of England", which have become canonical. "Hemans's influence is traceable in nineteenth-century verse, especially in new forms of dramatic lyric in the Brownings, Tennyson, and Kipling in Britain; Sigourney, Longfellow, Whittier, and Harper in America; and Droste-Hülshoff in Germany. Even Wordsworth's 'Extempore Effusion' reflects Hemans" (ODNB).

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