While Merry is the poet most commonly associated with the Della Cruscan school, this book argues that Della Cruscanism was a movement dominated by female poets and that this was one of the key reasons for the later disavowal and downgrading of its poetic accomplishments.

1. ​Introduction: Poetry, Women, and the Rise of the Fashionable Newspaper.- 2. A Brief History of the World: Mary Wells, Edward Topham, and the "Paper of Poetry".- 3. Hannah Cowley and the Della Cruscan Star System.- 4. John Bell's New World: The Oracle and the Female Poet.- 5. The End of the Romance: Della Cruscanism in Wartime.- 6. Mary Robinson, Charlotte Dacre, and the Afterlives of Della Cruscanism.- 7. Conclusion.

This book explores Della Cruscan poetry in the late eighteenth-century literary scene. A sociable, ornate, and deeply theatrical type of poetry, Della Cruscanism was associated with writers like Robert Merry, Mary Robinson, and Hannah Cowley. While Merry is the poet most commonly associated with the Della Cruscan school, this book argues that Della Cruscanism was a movement dominated by female poets and that this was one of the key reasons for the later disavowal and downgrading of its poetic accomplishments. It offers a close examination of these women writers and their role in shaping the poetic culture of the fashionable newspaper. In doing so, this study offers the first account of the feminization of the fashionable newspaper and of popular literary culture in the final years of the eighteenth century. Claire Knowles is Senior Lecturer in English at La Trobe University, Australia. She is author of Sensibility and Female Poetic Tradition, 1780-1860: The Legacy of Charlotte Smith (2009) and edited Charlotte Smith: The Major Poems with Ingrid Horrocks. Claire is also the current President of the Romantic Studies Association of Australasia.

Highlights the significance and dominance of female poets in the Della Cruscan movement Shows how women writers came to play a pivotal role in shaping the poetic culture of the fashionable newspaper Surveys popular poetry published in four key daily newspapers in the late eighteenth century

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