Ann Yearsley (1752-1806) was a humble rural worker who sold milk for a living, but was best known as a poet. Her success in getting a significant amount of work published dismissed the contemporary notion that to be poor and uneducated precluded a life of letters. This thesis examines the constraints and repressions faced by a woman from the lower orders with a will to write. Ann Yearsley’s journey into print is framed in the context of the poet’s effective negotiation through an eighteenth-century society still rooted in gender and class ideology and restraints. This study is distinctive in offering an updated account of an unlikely literary career. This is not a literary study of Yearsley, but offers a nuanced and critical reading of Yearsley’s poetry and correspondence to throw new light on her personal struggle to become a professional writer. This thesis concludes that Ann Yearsley was an important cultural figure in her time because she overcame the difficulties encountered by a female writer from the lower orders. In doing this she showed that a window existed for other women from the laboring classes to become published writers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:753067 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Bowring, Barbara |
| Publisher | University of Birmingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/8321/ |
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