The literary career of Anna Seward (1742–1809) had many frustrations. Erasmus Darwin once printed her poetry under his own name. Horace Walpole accused her of having 'no imagination'. And despite her evident talents, she was unable to find a patron willing to support a woman. Yet her letters reveal the breadth of her interests and the strength of her literary criticism. In addition to writing to newspapers and magazines, she counted many eminent figures among her correspondents, including James Boswell (who begged for a lock of her hair) and the young Walter Scott. This six-volume selection of her letters, edited by the publisher Archibald Constable (1774–1827), first appeared in 1811. Full of Seward's characteristic good humour, Volume 5 covers the years 1797–1801. It features her reflections on slavery, the disinclination of the young toward a religious life, and the troubled state of Ireland, alongside frank accounts of the rheumatism that plagued her middle age.
