Felicia Hemans – författare

Felicia Hemans (1793-1835), one of the most influential and widely-read poets of the nineteenth century, wrote Records of Woman in 1828 at the height of her long career. In the series, which includes nineteen poems about exemplary lives, Hemans explores what it means to be a woman, challenging traditional beliefs while at the same time reinforcing persistent stereotypes. Her work celebrates the lives, events, and imagined thoughts of unremembered women from different cultures and time periods whose deeds show nobility of spirit and inner strength. In her introduction, Paula Feldman examines how Hemans's poetry shaped and was shaped by nineteenth-century literary tastes, and she reconsiders the aesthetic value of Hemans's work and the current understanding of the nature of Romanticism.

Felicia Hemans (1793-1835), one of the most influential and widely-read poets of the nineteenth century, wrote Records of Woman in 1828 at the height of her long career. In the series, which includes nineteen poems about exemplary lives, Hemans explores what it means to be a woman, challenging traditional beliefs while at the same time reinforcing persistent stereotypes. Her work celebrates the lives, events, and imagined thoughts of unremembered women from different cultures and time periods whose deeds show nobility of spirit and inner strength. In her introduction, Paula Feldman examines how Hemans's poetry shaped and was shaped by nineteenth-century literary tastes, and she reconsiders the aesthetic value of Hemans's work and the current understanding of the nature of Romanticism.

Who was the bestselling English poet of the nineteenth century? No, not Tennyson or Byron or Wordsworth-but Felicia Hemans (1793-1835), "e;the most considerable woman poet of the Romantic period"e; and "e;the most notable British poet flourishing between the death of Byron and the rise of Tennyson and the Brownings"e; (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2008). With an unfailing and seemingly effortless command of language, she voiced the deepest concerns of ordinary people, especially women, to an extent that no other writer of her time could do. The 106 poems in this collection range from the legends of Wales to the historical records of Greenland, and from the superstitions of ancient Babylon to her own personal struggles with desertion, loneliness, and fatal illness.