Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson’s “The Deserted Wife”

Abstract

Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson (1737–1801) was one of the most prolific and notable poets in eighteenth-century Philadelphia. From her youthful romance with William Franklin; to her account of her trip to Great Britain, which was circulated among elite Philadelphians; to her friendships with John Dickinson, Jacob Duche, Francis Hopkinson, Milcah Martha Moore, Benjamin Rush, William Smith, and Annis Boudinot Stockton, Fergusson’s life was filled with wit, sociability,serious reflection,and nearly constant literary production. Most of her poetry remains in manuscript, although many letters to and from Fergusson were edited by Simon Gratz and published in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography in 1915 and 1917. Library Company of Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the William Smith Papers at the University of Pennsylvania Archives and Record Center contain the bulk of her writings. Among this work are letters, petitions, psalm paraphrases, an epic versification of the story of Telemachus, odes to the seasons, devotional poems, a versification of John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, comments on Benjamin Rush’s medical inquiries, and neoclassical poetry on all manner of topics. The Deserted Wife is unusual among Fergusson’s oeuvre...