The Posthumous Public and Private Printing of Mary Tighe’s Poetry

• Published in: Nineteenth-Century gender studies 2022-07, Vol.18 (2)
• Main Author: Harriet Kramer Linkin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Classical literature; Editors; Literature; Poetry
• ISSN: 1556-7524

Perhaps inevitably, they establish one-sided conversations that reify themselves in their representation and valuation of Tighe: while her Latinist husband lauds her knowledge of classical literature, her Methodist mother focuses on her spirituality, and her coterie companion emphasizes her sociality. In an 1804 Christmas Eve letter to Joseph Cooper Walker, she writes: I have myself been on the very verge of a most frightful precipice & had almost been persuaded to expose to the mercy of the reviewers, Edinburg butchers & all, my poor little Psyche & a volume of smaller poems which I was advis’d to add, as I thought, to serve like the straw appendages of a kite, that she might not fall to the ground by her own weight -- however after a few nights agitation I found that I have not nerves for it, let my stock of self conceit be as great as it may, so I am very obstinate to the partial solicitations of those who I am sure are chiefly anxious to provide me with what they think would prove amusement -- but it is too serious a business for that. According to the Longman archives at Reading University the firm went on to produce 2,000 copies of the octavo or third edition in August 1811, 2,000 copies of the fourth edition in June 1812, and 1,000 copies of the fifth edition in May 1816. [ 4 ] The sale of the copyright for Psyche, with Other Poems in July 1811 created a serious dilemma for Theodosia Blachford that autumn, who also sought to fulfill the duty of a survivor by publishing a collection of 30 of her daughter’s poems to offer a chronological overview of her spiritual and mental states between 1789 and 1809. [...]she improvised a radical solution.