Poetry Codex

Restoration & Augustan

Hannah Cowley

1743–1809

Hannah Cowley (1743–1809), born Hannah Parkhouse at Tiverton in Devon, was an English playwright and poet. After her marriage to Thomas Cowley she turned to the stage, and her comedies, above all The Belle's Stratagem (1780), kept the London theatres supplied for more than a decade; none of her plays is included here.

In 1787–88 she took part, as "Anna Matilda", in the Della Crusca exchange, an ornate verse correspondence with Robert Merry published in the newspaper The World. This selection gives her share of it from The Poetry of Anna Matilda (London: John Bell, 1788), with the other pieces in that volume, and her descriptive poem The Scottish Village: or, Pitcairne Green (1787). Her reply to a poem signed "Reuben" is included; Reuben's own piece is not. She died at Tiverton in 1809.

Poems (17)

  1. Written the Morning after Anna Matilda's Return from a Friend's House, Close on the Verge of Windsor Forest
  2. Invocation
  3. Address to Two Candles
  4. On seeing the Palette of a celebrated Painter
  5. The Funeral
  6. The Pen
  7. To Della Crusca ("Thou bidst!—'my purple slumbers fly'")
  8. Stanzas to Della Crusca
  9. To Della Crusca ("I hate the tardy Elegiac lay")
  10. Invocation to Horror
  11. To Reuben
  12. Ode to Indifference
  13. Ode to Della Crusca
  14. To Della Crusca ("Yes, on the mountain's haughty swell")
  15. To Della Crusca ("Oh stay, oh stay! thy rash speed check")
  16. A Tale for Jealousy
  17. The Scottish Village: or, Pitcairne Green

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