Mary Robinson: The Romantic Woman Writer Who Challenged Wordsworth

There is no country, at this epoch, on this habitable globe, which can produce so many exalted and illustrious women… as England.” – Mary Robinson (1799)

During her lifetime Mary Robinson (1757-1800) was a famous actress, dramatist, poet, novelist and familiar figure in the pages of the London press… not least for becoming an infamous royal mistress. Robinson also campaigned for women to be taken seriously as writers and thinkers. In 1800, she set her sights on the most influential work of the first major text of British Romanticism, William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads (1798). In her own response, Lyrical Tales, Robinson blends the Gothic, Comic and Sentimental to produce a volume which she playfully positions as doing what Wordsworth aspired to do but didn’t, to celebrate the folk tales and poetic style of the rural labouring classes. Part satire and part homage, Robinson’s collection also made the case for a new kind of Romanticism, one written by Romantic women writers with just as much genius as their male counterparts.

This event is hosted by a brilliant group of York St John University students that will tell the story of Robinson’s astonishing collection, as well as launching the publication of a brand-new, fully accessible and free-to-download eBook of the volume that they produced. A glass of fizz on arrival has never been so fitting!

Start time: 15:30 (Doors open 15:20)

Finish time: 16:45 approx

As part of York Georgian Festival!

Please note we have 2 wheelchair spaces available, please email ymhevents@york.gov.uk or call us on 01904 553663 when booking your tickets to secure a wheelchair space.