The Collected Poems of Amelia Alderson Opie offers the first collected, scholarly edition of poetical writings of one of the most celebrated women writers of the early nineteenth century. It brings together poems from a variety of sources, including three volumes of poetry assembled by the author, annual anthologies, periodicals, songs, manuscripts, fictional tales, broad sheets, separately published pamphlets, and unpublished private correspondence. The poems included cover the entire range of Opie's long career, starting with her earliest surviving works from the 1790s and extending through her last poems in 1850. The arrangement proposed for this edition gives an overall sense of Opie's development from her early experiments with short lyrics appearing in The Annual Anthology, The Cabinet, and The European Magazine to her first large-scale success with Poems and the publication of a number of song lyrics, to the longer narrative poems in The Warrior's Return to the final phase of her publishing life after officially joining the Quakers in 1825 - the appearance of Lays for the Dead, a sequence of elegies for both private and public figures. Until now, Opie has been known primarily through a few frequently anthologized poems focusing on her response to the war with France and her support of the abolition movement. The Collected Poems offers the opportunity to explore more fully the contribution made to literary culture in the period by a woman who throughout her life used poetry as the basis of affective connection with her world.

Review: "Written to stress the crosscurrent of ideas, this cultural encyclopedia provides clearly written and authoritative articles. Thoughts, themes, people, and nations that define the Romantic Era, as well as some frequently overlooked topics, receive their first encyclopedic treatments in 850 signed articles, with bibliographies and coverage of historical antecedents and lingering influences of romanticism. Even casual browsers will discover much to enjoy here."--"The Top 20 Reference Titles of the Year," American Libraries, May 2004.

A guide to British women authors, their works, and the writing about them.