Widely admired by distinguished contemporaries and popular with the reading public well into the nineteenth century, the poetry of Elizabeth Singer Rowe has, despite the resurgence of interest in women writers and new understandings of eighteenth-century poetry, come only slowly to modern critical attention. Rowe devised an elegant and credible poetic voice that spoke with eloquent female authority. Writing within the rich tradition of Christian verse, she shared the devotional and moral concerns of her age. She provided a model of piety and virtue that her contemporaries, male and female, understood and admired. Although important for the appreciation of eighteenth-century values and literary history, neither this tradition of Christian verse nor these concerns with piety and virtue are easily accessible for modern readers. Perhaps this explains the general lack of critical recognition of Rowe's achievement.

Elizabeth Singer, who married Thomas Rowe in 1710, was the eldest daughter of Walter...