Sap(p)hos and Phaons: Robert Merry, Mary Robinson and the Romantic History of the Lesbian Poet

Abstract

Robert Merry is now infamous as the ringleader of the Della Cruscan school of poets, whose poetry, nurtured in the pages of newspapers like the World and the Oracle, became something of a phenomenon in the 1780s and 90s. In 1783, however, he was just another young British dilettante in Florence whose first book Poems by R***** M**** (Florence, 1783) appears to have made little impact on the literary scene. In this essay, I examine a poem from this collection, ‘Sapho to Phaon: an Epistle’, and suggest that it is quite possible this early poem of Merry’s was an influence on Mary Robinson’s far more famous sonnet sequence, Sappho and Phaon (1796). Sappho and Phaon is typically regarded as Robinson’s most accomplished and overtly feminist works; the virtual antithesis of her ephemeral Della Cruscan productions. This essay suggests, however, that the sequence might also be seen productively as a continuation of the poet’s intertextual dialogue with Robert Merry. Viewed in this light, Sappho and Phaon’s Della Cruscan legacy becomes clear.