Date: w. 1736, 1749
"Why should I drag along this life I hate, / Without one thought to mitigate the weight? / Whence this mysterious bearing to exist, / When every joy is lost, and every hope dismissed? / In chains and darkness wherefore should I stay, / And mourn in prison, while I keep the key?"
preview | full record— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)
Date: 1751
"But could our Eyes behold the deep Recess, / Where soft Pamela's Thoughts in private rest, / You'd find, in spite of Hymen's sacred Vows, / Ten Hours in Twelve that she abhors her Spouse"
preview | full record— Leapor, Mary (1722-1746)
Date: 1766
"Now Brag the beaut'ous sex controuls, / And is the window to their souls."
preview | full record— Jemmat [née Yeo], Catherine (bap. 1714, d. 1766?)
Date: 1773
"My heart in Delia is so fully blest, / It has no room to lodge another joy."
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: 1777
"My pineal gland could you but view, / You'd scarce believe your eyes see true: / There's such a jumble; good and bad, / All sorts of thoughts, may there be had; / Like broker's shop, where we may find / Goods that belong to half mankind."
preview | full record— Savage, Mary (fl. 1763-1777)
Date: 1777
"Thus oft, from shop of brain, I try / To throw the dirt and rubbish by; / But still they gain their former state, / Or leave a vacuum in the pate."
preview | full record— Savage, Mary (fl. 1763-1777)
Date: 1780
A friend's "influence hovers o'er the panting heart ... Till the pain'd, prison'd mind shall rise, / And drop her feeble mansion in the dust, / To claim thy promis'd bliss beyond the skies"
preview | full record— Steele, Anne (1717-1778)
Date: 1780
"Through the night's still air / The sound of human voices, and the clank / Of iron hoofs, reveal'd a scene at once, / That almost shook his soul from her frail tenement."
preview | full record— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)
Date: 1780
Reason's subjects work and return home with "treasures fraught" and display before their queen their "shining spoils, which are laid up in "mental stores."
preview | full record— Steele, Anne (1717-1778)
Date: 1784
"The hidden lead indents the murderer's brain; / With one demoniac glance, as down he fell, / The soul starts furious from its vital cell."
preview | full record— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)