Lyrical Tales

by Mary Robinson

OLD BARNARD was still a lusty hind, Though his age was full fourscore; And he us'd to go Thro' hail and snow, To a neighb'ring town, With his old coat brown, To beg, at his GRANDSON'S door!

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1800

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Mary Robinson, nee Darby (1757-1800) was an English poet and novelist. During her lifetime she was known as 'the English Sappho'. She was also known for her role as Perdita (heroine of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale) in 1779 and as the first public mistress of George IV. After seeing her as Perdita, and declaring himself enraptured with her, the Prince of Wales, offered Mary Robinson twenty thousand pounds to become his mistress. However, he soon tired of her and abandoned her after a year, refusing to pay the money. Her reputation was destroyed by the affair, and she could no longer find work as an actress. Eventually, the Crown agreed to pay Robinson five thousand pounds, in return for the Prince's love letters to her. In 1783, at the age of 26, Robinson suffered a mysterious illness that left her partially paralyzed. From the late 1780s, she became distinguished for her poetry. In addition to poems, she wrote six novels, two plays, a feminist treatise, and an autobiographical manuscript that was incomplete at the time of her death.

Reviews

[Graham]

A mixed bag of poems from popular author Mary Robinson. The strange thing about this collection is its broadness, with light comedy mixing with even more lightweight romance and even a couple of Gothic odes added to the mix. The end result is eclectic to say the least, but it also means that some of the poems have aged terribly while others stand alongside the best of the era. Inevitably the Gothic stuff is what most interested me, with THE HAUNTED SHORE a favourite, although GOLFRE does go on a little too long to be as enervating.

[MAtt Gytrash]

A very competent poet whom Samuel Taylor Coleridge rated highly. Many poems from 'Lyrical Tales' had prior publication in the Morning Post - Mary was a lead contributor to this newspaper - but this collection, which Mary curated and arranged, specifying publisher and printer (the same as Wordsworth's whom she admired!), was only finally published after her untimely death in her mid forties.

[Lawrence]

It was fascinating to read her last volume right after her first: the poems have increased incredibly in complexity. I don’t know that most of the lyrical tales are beautiful or memorable, but they are definitely intriguing; I think one tale on its own would be interesting to teach some day, though probably not Golfre (as much as I like the Gothic, and its weirdest versions)

[Sam Hirst]

A really mixed bag here. I haven't got my head around what this collection was trying to do as a whole. There are absolutely wild changes in tone from dreary death in the sea accompanied by the echo of horrifying screams to a jovial poem about a slanderous parrot. I got whiplash!