Critics and Criticism in the Poetry of Anne Finch

Abstract

In this essay, I argue that Anne Finch should be considered within the history of English criticism. Through a half-hearted embrace of figures of male literary authority, who were at turns ironized or idealized, Finch sought ways for women's poetry to stand apart from and transcend a discordant culture of criticism. Throughout her career Finch was a strong advocate for provincial coterie writing, and women's poetry in particular. By tracing the relationship between Finch's thinking about criticism and her poetry across its different forms (manuscript collections, poetic miscellanies, and her own published volume), I explore the intersections between women's poetry and the practice of criticism in early eighteenth-century England.