Anne, Lady Southwell: Coteries and Culture

Abstract

Any discussion of the coteries in which a writer is involved is dependent on historical evidence, and one limiting factor in any discussion of Anne Southwell is the lack of evidence about her in the historical record. One scholar has gone so far as to declare that one of the writing circles in which it is claimed that Southwell took part in her youth is entirely invented.¹ Judgements about Southwell’s literary activities in her later life in Acton are necessarily speculative: Jean Klene imagines ‘a social life in Acton which included evenings of literature and music’, whereas Erica Longfellow, noting that Acton was ‘little more than a hamlet’ and that in any case neither Anne Southwell nor Henry Sibthorpe are listed among ‘notable and influential residents’, finds their collection of her poetry in Folger MS V.b.198 not so much a record of her intellectual achievement but a mark of their literary ambitions as a couple.² The following discussion, then, is based on the evidence of literary collaboration, sources and ideology within the two manuscripts left by Anne Southwell. In discussing any religious writer of the seventeenth century it is important to think about the ecclesiastical terminology under consideration. Jean Klene, Anne Southwell’s editor, remarks that ‘no-one would have mistaken her for a Puritan’ on the basis of the inventory of her clothes in the Folger manuscript of her works, Folger MS V.b.198.³