 Title page of Mary Scott's The Female Advocate (1775) | |
| Author | Mary Scott |
|---|---|
| Subject | literary women |
| Genre | poetry |
| Published | London |
| Publisher | Joseph Johnson |
| Publication date | 1775 |
| Pages | viii+41 pp. |
| Website | Google Books |
Mary Scott's The Female Advocate; a poem occasioned by reading Mr. Duncombe's Feminead (1775) is both a celebration of women's literary achievements, as well as an impassioned piece of advocacy for women's right to literary self-expression.
The Female Advocate takes John Duncombe's The Feminead: or, female genius. A poem (1754) as its inspiration. Scott expresses gratitude and admiration for Duncombe, then justifies her own project with her stated wish to expand his original list of "female geniuses", as well as to include some of those who came to prominence since he wrote (page v).
Duncombe's poem is celebratory; it rehearses the accomplishments of women writers of the mid-eighteenth-century. Scott cast further back in time in order to "tell what bright daughters BRITAIN once could boast" (l. 25) and introduces a series of women from the previous two centuries that would have already been familiar to most of her readers, beginning with the learned Protestant sixth wife of Henry VIII, Catherine Parr. She continues chronologically into the quarter-century between when Duncombe's poem was published two decades earlier and the time of her own writing. Her poem combines the tradition of the catalogue of exemplary women that Duncombe follows, with that of another genre that would also have been familiar to her readers: the defence of women.
Scott's poem consists of 522 lines of heroic couplets. It is dedicated to her close friend, Mary Steele, and contains several references to people within their circle.
Pastoral pseudonyms, or noms de plumes, were popular in the eighteenth century, and Scott uses them in this poem, both widely known ones such as "Orinda" for Katherine Philips, as well as pen names employed in a more limited way, within her own circle. Female writers often published anonymously. Scott includes two anonymous writers in the body of the poem and mentions a third in the introduction.
In the introduction, Scott mentions four writers who had "started up since the writing of this little piece": Hester Chapone (1727–1801), Hannah More, Phillis Wheatley, and the unnamed author of "poems by a lady" "lately published" by G. Robinson in Paternoster Row. She implies that there is no shortage of subjects: "Authors have appeared with honour, in almost every walk of literature."