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: