Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 The Gaelic Tradition up to 1750
- 2 Scottish Women Writers C.1560-C.1650
- 3 Old Singing Women and the Canons of Scottish Balladry and Song
- 4 Women and Song 1750-1850
- 5 Selves and Others: Non-fiction Writing in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries
- 6 Burns’s Sister
- 7 ‘Kept some steps behind him’: Women in Scotland 1780-1920
- 8 Some Early Travellers
- 9 From Here to Alterity: The Geography of Femininity in the Poetry of Joanna Baillie
- 10 Some Women of the Nineteenth-century Scottish Theatre: Joanna Baillie, Frances Wright and Helen MacGregor
- 11 The Other Great Unknowns: Women Fiction Writers of the Early Nineteenth Century
- 12 Rediscovering Scottish Women’s Fiction in the Nineteenth Century
- 13 Elizabeth Grant
- 14 Viragos of the Periodical Press: Constance Gordon'Cumming, Charlotte Dempster, Margaret Oliphant, Christian Isohel Johnstone
- 15 Jane Welsh Carlyle’s Private Writing Career
- 16 Beyond ‘The Empire of the Gentle Heart’: Scottish Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century
- 17 What a Voice! Women, Repertoire and Loss in the Singing Tradition
- 18 Margaret Oliphant
- 19 Caught Between Worlds: The Fiction of Jane and Mary Findlater
- 20 Scottish Women Writers Abroad: The Canadian Experience
- 21 Women and Nation
- 22 Annie S. Swan and O. Douglas: Legacies of the Kailyard
- 23 Tales of Her Own Countries: Violet Jacob
- 24 Fictions of Development 1920-1970
- 25 Marion Angus and the Boundaries of Self
- 26 Catherine Carswell: Qpen the Door!
- 27 Willa Muir: Crossing the Genres
- 28 ‘To know Being': Substance and Spirit in the Work of Nan Shepherd
- 29 Twentieth-century Poetry I: Rachel Annand Taylor to Veronica Forrest-Thomson
- 30 More Than Merely Ourselves: Naomi Mitchison
- 31 The Modem Historical Tradition
- 32 Jane Duncan: The Homecoming of Imagination
- 33 Jessie Kesson
- 34 Scottish Women Dramatists Since 1945
- 35 The Remarkable Fictions of Muriel Spark
- 36 Vision and Space in Elspeth Davie's Fiction
- 37 Designer Kailyard
- 38 Twentieth-century Poetry II: The Last Twenty-five Years
- 39 Contemporary Fiction I: Tradition and Continuity
- 40 Contemporary Fiction II: Seven Writers in Scotland
- 41 Contemporary Fiction III: The Anglo-Scots
- 42 The Mirror and the Vamp: Liz Lochhead
- 43 Women's Writing in Scottish Gaelic Since 1750
- Select Bibliographies of Scottish Women Writers
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
16 - Beyond ‘The Empire of the Gentle Heart’: Scottish Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 The Gaelic Tradition up to 1750
- 2 Scottish Women Writers C.1560-C.1650
- 3 Old Singing Women and the Canons of Scottish Balladry and Song
- 4 Women and Song 1750-1850
- 5 Selves and Others: Non-fiction Writing in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries
- 6 Burns’s Sister
- 7 ‘Kept some steps behind him’: Women in Scotland 1780-1920
- 8 Some Early Travellers
- 9 From Here to Alterity: The Geography of Femininity in the Poetry of Joanna Baillie
- 10 Some Women of the Nineteenth-century Scottish Theatre: Joanna Baillie, Frances Wright and Helen MacGregor
- 11 The Other Great Unknowns: Women Fiction Writers of the Early Nineteenth Century
- 12 Rediscovering Scottish Women’s Fiction in the Nineteenth Century
- 13 Elizabeth Grant
- 14 Viragos of the Periodical Press: Constance Gordon'Cumming, Charlotte Dempster, Margaret Oliphant, Christian Isohel Johnstone
- 15 Jane Welsh Carlyle’s Private Writing Career
- 16 Beyond ‘The Empire of the Gentle Heart’: Scottish Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century
- 17 What a Voice! Women, Repertoire and Loss in the Singing Tradition
- 18 Margaret Oliphant
- 19 Caught Between Worlds: The Fiction of Jane and Mary Findlater
- 20 Scottish Women Writers Abroad: The Canadian Experience
- 21 Women and Nation
- 22 Annie S. Swan and O. Douglas: Legacies of the Kailyard
- 23 Tales of Her Own Countries: Violet Jacob
- 24 Fictions of Development 1920-1970
- 25 Marion Angus and the Boundaries of Self
- 26 Catherine Carswell: Qpen the Door!
- 27 Willa Muir: Crossing the Genres
- 28 ‘To know Being': Substance and Spirit in the Work of Nan Shepherd
- 29 Twentieth-century Poetry I: Rachel Annand Taylor to Veronica Forrest-Thomson
- 30 More Than Merely Ourselves: Naomi Mitchison
- 31 The Modem Historical Tradition
- 32 Jane Duncan: The Homecoming of Imagination
- 33 Jessie Kesson
- 34 Scottish Women Dramatists Since 1945
- 35 The Remarkable Fictions of Muriel Spark
- 36 Vision and Space in Elspeth Davie's Fiction
- 37 Designer Kailyard
- 38 Twentieth-century Poetry II: The Last Twenty-five Years
- 39 Contemporary Fiction I: Tradition and Continuity
- 40 Contemporary Fiction II: Seven Writers in Scotland
- 41 Contemporary Fiction III: The Anglo-Scots
- 42 The Mirror and the Vamp: Liz Lochhead
- 43 Women's Writing in Scottish Gaelic Since 1750
- Select Bibliographies of Scottish Women Writers
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
Summary
Let loftier minstrels sway the lordly brain - Be mine the empire of the gentle heart.
(Elizabeth Jane Irving, Fireside Lays, 1872)Nine tee nth'Century poetry by women is often equated with Irving's ‘Empire of the gentle heart’. According to received wisdom, ladies and ministers’ daughters dominated a secluded literary scene, composing stilted rhymes focusing on family and faith. Certainly this was a strand in nineteenth-century poetry, exemplified by the cautious compositions of women like Lady Nairne, Caroline Oliphant the Younger, and Joanna Baillie. However, an alternative tradition of vigorous verse was present albeit neglected by contemporaries. The most exciting poetry of the period went beyond ‘the empire of the gentle heart’ into uncharted territories: personal, social and political. The majority of the second type of poetry was composed by women dismissed, because they lacked formal education, as ‘self-taught’. Autodidacts, paradoxically, produced the most exciting verse of the nineteenth century.
Autodidactic woman wrote primarily for self-expression, when they could, with conviction, passion and skill. Isobel Pagan (1741—1821), for instance, wrote poetry at the same time as running a howff from her home at Muirkirk. Remembered as vivacious, she has been described as a woman of ‘a very unearthy appearance’: she had a squint, a large tumour on her side and a deformed foot. She had a child by a man called Campbell who deserted her. Although Pagan could not write, the tailor William Gemmell transcribed on her behalf. She outlines her education, and boisterous present, in A Collection of Poems and Songs (c. 1805). Typically for an autodidact, she had only occasional lessons but was a voracious reader:
I was bom near four miles from Nith-head,
Where fourteen years I got my bread;
My learning it can soon be told,
Ten weeks, when I was seven years old …
And when I grew a wee thought mair,
I read when 1 had time to spare;
But a’ the whole tract of my time,
I found myself inclined to rhyme,
When I see merry company,
I sing a song with mirth and glee,
I sing a song with mirth and glee,
And sometimes I the whisky pree,
But ‘deed it's best to let it be.
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- Information
- A History of Scottish Women's Writing , pp. 246 - 261Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020