Letter-writing, Community, and Virtuous Exemplarity: Elizabeth Rowe’s Theatre of Happiness

Abstract

Elizabeth Singer Rowe (1674–1737) was one of the most lauded and idealised woman writers to appear on the literary scene in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Extolled well into the nineteenth century for her piety, virtue, and reclusiveness, Rowe’s biographical exemplarity has been the primary legacy of her literary career. Often identified as one of the significant links in a chain of female exemplars, Rowe’s role as part of the virtuous opposition — held up in antithesis to the scandalous female writer who wrote for profit and fame — has buried her works under the potentially uninteresting image of the pious and enthusiastic recluse.