Ann Yearsley

In her lifetime, Ann Yearsley was viewed with a mixture of admiration and distaste; an accomplished writer of many literary styles, Yearsley's spectacular break from her first patron and discoverer would, for many, cast a shadow over her subsequent successes. More recently, critics have often divided into those who admire Yearsley as a poet of immense talent, and those who see her as an ambitious and ungrateful woman, resentful of all that her first patron, Hannah More, had done on her behalf. This article will reconsider these attitudes towards Yearsley and her eventful literary career and suggest that the more nuanced approach to her work taken by a new generation of Yearsley scholars must be developed if her writing is to receive the recognition it has long deserved. I will argue that the relationship between More and Yearsley needs to be considered within the context and long‐standing tradition of patronage and the increasing professionalism of writing. I will also consider Yearsley's later works, and argue that their neglect is a direct consequence of some critics’ refusal to look beyond the first eighteen months of a literary career that would endure for more than a decade, and which would survive one of the most turbulent periods of European history

Admiration · Aesthetics · Art · Context (archaeology · Literary criticism · Literature · Neglect · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Resentment · Shadow (psychology · Sociology · Historical Art and Culture Studies · History · Law · Psychology

• Literary Patronage in England, 1650–1800

  Open Access•Dustin Griffin•Literary Patronage in England,…•1996

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• Living by the Pen

  Cheryl Turner•LIVING BY THE PEN•1992

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• "Ann Yearsley and the Politics of Patronage "The Thorp Arch Archive

  Frank Felsenstein•Tulsa Studies in Women s Literature•2002

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• Hannah More

  Kathryn Gleadle•The English Historical Review•2004

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