The poet Augusta Webster was distinctive for her forcefulness, psychological acuity, and reforming spirit. She evinced the first two in her narrative poetry, lyrics, sonnets, translations, dramatic monologues, novel, and plays and the last in her suffragism and work for the London School Board. Her literary work was well reviewed, and its subsequent neglect has been unwarranted. She wrote several effective women's monologues (including "A Castaway," spoken by a prostitute) and created some complex and believable dramatic heroines.

Webster's forms and mannerisms were pioneered in works by others--Robert Browning's monologues, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sarcastic declamations, and Alfred Tennyson's lyric interludes. Though derivative in form, her poetry often uses such patterns with great skill, and her plays at their best balance mild reformism with romance.

Webster was born Julia Augusta Davies in 1837. Her maternal grandfather was Joseph Hume (1767-1843), a close friend of Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, and William...