This collection consists of two volumes that contain six manuscript poems written by Anna Seward (1742-1809). The first volume includes a 21-page copy of Monody on Major André, which was published in 1781, as well as an untitled 6-line poem in French on the follies of young women. Major John André, about whom she composed her Monody, had courted one of Seward's close friends and went on to be accused and executed by the Americans as a spy during the Revolutionary War. The pieces in the second volume include 8 pages of "Verses by Miss Seward, on receving [sic] Mr Hayley's Picture drawn for her by Mr. Romney," signed by Seward and dated Litchfield, November 7, 1781; a 12-line "Epitaph On Anne Whately who died May 1793 aged ten years"; and two undated sonnets.
William Hayley was an English poet who briefly courted Seward and with whom she corresponded throughout her adult life. The William L. Clements Library holds prints of the George Romney portrait to which her poem refers. Anne Whately has not been identified.
Anna Seward (1742-1809), often referred to as the "Swan of Lichfield," earned acclaim as a poetess and writer in late-18th-century Great Britain. The daughter of an Anglican minister, Thomas Seward (1708-1790), she grew up in Lichfield, England. Under her father's guidance, she read widely in English literature, and his own literary pursuits brought her into the company of many famous authors of the day, including Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Day, and Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Seward never married and spent most of her adult life in Lichfield, caring for her ailing parent and managing family finances as well as writing extensively and corresponding broadly in poetry and prose. Her major works include Elegy on Captain Cook (1780), Monody on Major André (1781), Louisa: a Poetical Novel, in Four Epistles (1784), Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Darwin (1804), and several volumes of verse.