After the publication of Tales of Superstition and Chivalry, Bannerman continued to struggle financially. The back-to-back deaths of her mother and brother in late 1803 and early 1804 left her without any family relations, and on the verge of financial destitution. Against the practical advice of a small circle of patrons led by Robert Anderson, Bannerman made one final attempt to launch her literary career. When an effort to secure a public annuity was unsuccessful, she began soliciting subscriptions for a third volume of poetry. In July of 1807, Poems, A New
80 See, for example, Anne Williams’ Art of Darkness (1995), Michael Gamer’s Romanticism and the Gothic
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Edition was printed by Mundel, Doig, & Stevenson.81 According to a letter from Anderson to Thomas Percy, the subscription fee was a single guinea and Bannerman had secured 250 names (221).82 In the same letter, Anderson also notes that £200 was reserved for printing costs, which left Bannerman with a profit of approximately £60 (221). Because the volume was issued by subscription, there were no reviews published in journals or periodicals.83
Bannerman dedicated Poems, A New Edition to Lady Charlotte Rawdon, an Irish patron of the arts who was acquainted with Maria Edgeworth and Walter Scott. Anderson’s
correspondence reveals that he and Joseph Cooper Walker brought Bannerman and her work to the attention of Lady Rawdon, with the hope that she would utilize her artistic connections on Bannerman’s behalf. Unfortunately, Anderson’s correspondence also confirms that the volume was not a success for Bannerman, for by late 1807, she had already accepted a position as governess at the residence of Lady Frances Beresford in Exeter, England. The failure of the volume to generate any further interest in her poetry was surely a major disappointment for her. Barring a single poem attributed to “Miss Bannerman” in John Murray’s literary miscellany The Casket in 1829, it appears that Bannerman abandoned the pursuit of writing poetry altogether after Poems, A New Edition. Therefore, the volume is significant as it represents Bannerman’s last official public and formal poetic statement.
Rather than take the commercial risk of publishing an entire volume of new poems, Bannerman’s decision to present a compilation of her previous works suggests that she continued to feel confident about the material five years after the lukewarm response to Tales of
81 Letter XCI, 23 July 1807 (Anderson 254-259). 82 Letter LXXIV, 28 June 1806 (Anderson 219-222).
83 The e-text version of Poems, A New Edition that is in circulation in the public domain does not include the
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Superstition and Chivalry, and nearly seven years after her debut collection. The majority of the volume consists of selections from Poems, which was received more favorably than Tales upon its initial publication in 1800. The content from the debut volume was re-ordered, and grouped into four new sections – “Lyrical Pieces,” “Sonnets from Werter,” “Sonnets from Petrarch &c,” and “Original Sonnets.” Longer narrative poems such as “Verses on an Illumination for a Naval Victory” and “The Nun” appear before each of the two sonnet sections, while “The Genii” – Bannerman’s longest poem, and the first poem in the debut collection – has been repositioned as the last poem before the final section, which is comprised of all but two of the ballads from Tales of Superstition and Chivalry. Interspersed throughout each of the first four sections are a total of eleven new poems that were either unpublished or appeared in miscellaneous periodicals
between 1803 and 1805. The previously uncollected material includes two narrative poems (“The Fall of Switzerland” and “Exile”), a new autobiographical poem entitled “To a Friend,” two new original sonnets (“Good Friday” and “Easter”), two poems dedicated to Robert Anderson and Joanna Baillie respectively, and four new translations.
Nearly all of the poems that originally appeared in the 1800 volume are reprinted for Poems, A New Edition; however, the original sonnet “The Benighted Arab,” as well as two of the Petrarch translations, have been omitted. Additionally, Bannerman replaced her translation of a poem by Giovanni della Casa with a translation of Lazzarini di Morro’s “At the Sepulchre of Petrarch.” The majority of Bannerman’s editorial revisions throughout the volume consists of modernizing certain words, or doing away with antiquated capitalization and stylistic
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been subtly pruned to produce a tighter and more fluid narrative, but none of the poems are
significantly impacted by Bannerman’s minor grammatical revisions.84
Eight of the ten ballads from Tales of Superstition and Chivalry are presented as their own section to conclude the volume, with a new sequence and running order. As noted in the previous section, both “The Festival of St. Magnus the Martyr” and “The Black Knight of the Water” have been omitted, along with all four of the original illustrations. The defiant
“Prologue” remains, but the Guarini epigram from the 1802 title page is not reproduced. The ballads are still framed by “The Dark Ladie” and “The Prophecy of Merlin,” but the others have been shifted around to produce a different reading experience. In the original sequence of poems, the supernatural elements gradually intensify throughout the first four ballads. Each paranormal encounter is decisively more physical than the last, culminating with the poisonous touch of Lady Ellinor in “The Penitent’s Confession.” In the new running order, “The Dark Ladie” is no longer followed by “The Prophetess of the Oracle of Seäm” – another ballad that pits men against a mysterious veiled femme fatale – but is instead followed by “Basil,” a significantly more Romantic than Gothic poem, which implies that the protagonist’s belief in the supernatural is the product of naivety and inexperience. “Basil” is then followed by “The Penitent’s
Confession,” which makes for a rather startling shift from an incredulous depiction of supernatural terror to the volume’s most graphic and genuinely horrific poem. The climactic unveiling of the Penitent’s rotten arm is also diminished by placing it after “Basil” in the volume, for the new sequence fails to build suspense in the same way as the original running order. Furthermore, it renders poems such as “The Fisherman of Lapland” and “The Perjured Nun” –
84 For a more detailed examination of the textual variations between Poems and Tales of Superstition and Chivalry
and the versions that appear in Poems, A New Edition, please see the “Textual Variants in Poems, A New Edition” beginning on p.402.
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which immediately follow – as somewhat quaint in their comparably more restrained Gothic elements. The only advantage of the new running order of the Tales ballads is that they appear more diverse in their tone and subject matter, and one could argue that the poems also seem to stand more on their own as unique pieces. However, the original sequence of ten rather than eight poems exhibits an arguably more impressive conceptual design that better showcases how each of the ballads build upon and mirror one another.
The eleven new offerings that appear in Poems, A New Edition can be loosely grouped into three categories – personal poems, narrative poems, and translations. With the exception of “The Car of Death,” Bannerman’s translation of Antonio Allamanni’s sixteenth-century poem about an extravagant funeral procession, the Gothic and supernatural elements are not as prominent in these poems. Instead, the narrative poems are more politically topical while the others offer a slightly more candid glimpse into Bannerman’s personal life. Two of the shorter poems are addressed to specific individuals that had a significant impact on her life, while a third, simply entitled “To A Friend,” is most likely informed by memories of her brother who died at sea while employed in the British Navy in 1804. The “Friend” of the title is never identified, but appears to be a suitor of some kind; however, the speaker implies that she is too grief-stricken and unhappy to accept any attention or romantic gestures. The poem possesses an air of hardened experience and emotional maturation that is absent in the more sentimental poems from the 1800 volume. In particular, the poem laments the finality of death and presents a more agnostic view in regard to the supernatural:
For Hope cannot stand by the mouldering tomb, And summon the dead from that fathomless gloom; They have pass’d into darkness, in silence repos’d,
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Their race is accomplish’d – their wayfaring clos’d. (13-16)
In so many of Bannerman’s ballads and in the most Gothic poems from the debut collection, the supernatural signified possibility and offered spiritual transcendence by providing a means for the restless dead to avenge themselves or communicate information they were incapable of sharing while still alive. But in this poem, the dead are irrevocably silent, and can offer no
comfort or confirmation of an after-life – they simply vanish and leave their loved ones behind to mourn them. The speaker admits that she “cannot forget” or fully accept the loss she has
experienced, but has come to terms with the fact that her own life will never be the same (20). It is important to note, however, that the tone of the poem is one of cold resignation rather than a bid for self-pity. She very pragmatically states that while “the hopes that have beam’d on my life in its prime” have faded, there is no reason for her anonymous “friend” to share the same
unhappy fate (21). The concluding lines imply that it would be best for the friend to move on, rather than become burdened by the speaker’s incapacity to return his feelings.
“To Robert Anderson, M.D.” is a significantly more cheerful poem, in which Bannerman humbly expresses her gratitude to her long-time mentor and patron who oversaw the publication of all of her work. In her “faint tribute” she notes how his “friendship smooth’d the perils of the way,” referring to her financial and personal struggles, but also in retrospect could serve as an allusion to his support for her after the rough reception of Tales (6). She also notes how his experience “to youth’s unsteady breast decision brought / Calm’d the rude fear, and nerv’d the timid thought” (7-8). The reference to her “youth” is another valuable confirmation of
Bannerman’s young age at the time of her first volume’s publication, which would place her birthdate much closer to 1780 than 1765, as Katie Lister’s recent research has confirmed.
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Perhaps most interesting of the collection’s personal poems is Bannerman’s expression of admiration for Joanna Baillie, which was originally sent to the Scottish poet and playwright after the publication of her highly-successful Plays on the Passions in 1798. The poem contains Bannerman’s most favorable references to her native country, for she encourages Baillie to more frequently mine the myths and legends of Scotland in future plays and poems. The poem is also fascinating in its boldness. After favorably comparing Baillie to Shakespeare, the unknown Bannerman offers unsolicited advice to a far more popular and established writer. Yet what is most perplexing about the poem is that Bannerman never applies her advice to her own work, for her poems rarely consider her “native plains” of Scotland (42). One way to interpret this paradox points to Bannerman’s self-deprecation, for she implies that a poet like Baillie is better suited to represent her country: “These accents for their country claim / The pride, the honour, of thy native name” (44-45). Baillie herself was considerably flattered, but she also downplayed her significance as a national poet:
I received yesterday the very elegant copy of verses with which you have honour’d me, and return you my sincere thanks, tho’ I feel myself altogether unworthy of the high praise you have bestow’d upon me. To be thought well of by my country women, and remember’d in the land which I love, will always be to me the most gratifying reward of my labours. (McLean 33).
Baillie exhibited further grace and humility by signing her short response to Bannerman as “your much obliged servant” (McLean 33). Surely, the younger poet was thrilled to have received such a kind response from an author she admired so deeply.
A pair of religious poems “Good Friday” and “Easter” appear in Poems, A New Edition and are an unexpected addition to Bannerman’s oeuvre. The poems first appeared in The
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Poetical Register and Repository of Fugitive Poetry for 1803, which was published by F. and C. Rivington in London in early 1805. The poems come across as more than mere occasional verse inspired by the Easter holiday. Although conventionally religious, both poems are vivid,
descriptive, and sincere – particularly “Good Friday,” which features powerfully evocative imagery of Christ’s suffering on the cross. Beginning with an allusion to Christ’s famous last words, the initial ten lines are rife with violent and nearly Gothic descriptive elements: “Rent is the mystic veil of power in twain, / And light in thickest darkness shrouds his beams” (3-4). The poem channels Christ’s agony on “that cross of pain” yet notes the look of “mercy” in His “last expiring gaze” (1, 2). Recalling some of the gloomy landscapes in her other poems, Bannerman describes Golgotha as “that dread abode / Whence Nature shrunk in doubt – or despair” (7-8). Yet these ominous descriptions shift at the volta and segue into a celebration of Christ’s sacrifice for the salvation of humanity. Instead of “tears,” the narrator calls for “deep Hosannas” and “pealing adorations” (10, 11, 12). By the poem’s end, the victimized Christ is transformed to a “kingly Victor,” and humanity can rejoice with “no more…fear” (13, 14). While not a
traditionally Gothic poem, Bannerman uses foreboding descriptive language to intensify her depiction of Christ’s crucifixion. It is a religious poem filtered through a semi-Gothic sensibility, but it is not sensationalized, nor is it designed to raise fear as much as sympathy for the torment endured by Christ.
The triumphant poem “Easter” is unsurprisingly the more conventional of the two poems, but it does contain at least one unique and memorable image of Christ “bursting the grave” (5). Bannerman’s depiction of Christ is akin to the sweeping omnipotent supernatural beings in her earlier poems like “The Genii” or “The Spirit of the Air.” Like a victorious general at war, He
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declares “dominion o’er the last of foes” (7). He offers “immortal life” to believers and the
promise of liberation to those “who bear / Life’s fitful storm, or wait the king of fears!” (8, 9-10). Once again, the supernatural – in this case, the holiest and most powerful form of the
supernatural in the Christian sense – offers hope to the disenfranchised or downtrodden. In the final four lines, Bannerman poses a question that invites readers to consider the extent of Christ’s sacrifice in relation to their own pride. If a being as powerful as Christ – one “whose eternal years / had seen the advent of created Time” – was willing to “stoop” to experience shame, torture, and death, why “shall man reluctant bow, to purchase bliss sublime?” (12-13, 11, 13-14). Although the orthodox religious sentiments of “Good Friday” and “Easter” are somewhat
anomalous to Bannerman’s usually personal or Gothic subjects, they still possess certain
defining characteristics that connect them to her greater body of work, which suggests that even when she branched out in terms of poetic subject matter, her poems still have a particular style that is unique to her.
The two new narrative poems collected in Poems, A New Edition are significant because they respond to early nineteenth-century political issues stemming from the Napoleonic Wars. In “The Fall of Switzerland,” Bannerman expresses feelings of disappointment and disillusion after Switzerland was twice invaded by France in 1798 and 1802. The poem reflects changing
attitudes and sensibilities toward Switzerland in the wake of French occupation. According to Patrick H. Vincent, Switzerland was regarded by early nineteenth-century British artists as an idyllic nation where “liberty, nature, and manners elegantly mirror one another” (136).85 The opening two stanzas of the poem reinforce such emblematic idealism, in praising the county’s
85 Yet another link to Coleridge is forged with “The Fall of Switzerland,” for he composed a similar poem in
February of 1798 entitled “France: An Ode.” Both poems juxtapose the celebrated natural landscapes with images of battle, although Coleridge’s is perhaps the more sanguinary of the two, evoking images of “blood- stained streams” and “mountain-snows” spotted with “bleeding wounds” (67, 69-70).
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renowned natural landscapes and noting how the “forests…/ have nurs’d the good, the brave, / And stretch’d o’er many a partriot grave” (1-3). But this Edenic paradise is lost “when o’er the cliffs the Spoiler came, / with banners red, and arms of flame” (10-11). The British public was shocked that the French chose to invade the non-aggressive country of Switzerland, but was even further dismayed by how easily the country yielded to Napoleon’s forces (Vincent 137). As a result of the country’s defeat, “British public opinion shifted away from the eighteenth-century image of the Swiss as moral exemplars with a heroic, virile history, toward a more negative idea of Switzerland as passive, feminized, and complicit in its fate” (Vincent 138).
Bannerman’s poem captures these feelings of disappointment, asking “Where, Glory now, thy chiefs of old, / To stem the tide of slavery?” (15-16). At the heart of the poem, the embittered narrator sums up Switzerland’s political fate and culpability for its own defeat:
Victor no more! – yield, Valour, yield Thy sacred arms and shatter’d shield, And humbled on thy chosen field, Await the chains of tyranny. (25-28)
Where Switzerland was once an exemplar of freedom, Bannerman declares that “no glory beams where Freedom died” (30). The final stanzas of the poem are aimed at the national pride of Swiss readers, for Bannerman sharply reminds them of past military glories: “in ages rude, / …many a band of freeman stood, / o’er hills of ice and fields of blood / to charge the invading ravager” (33-36). She adds, “what echoing plain, what mountains hoar / heard not your storm of battle roar?” (41-42). Although Switzerland did not always win these ancient battles, those men at least “fought” and “fell,” while the current “sons of fame… / blush not for [their] country’s shame” (37-38).
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For Bannerman, the events that inspired “The Fall of Switzerland” exemplify why pacifism is often an ineffectual political stance. Aggression must be met with resistance, which in turn requires an expression of strength and further aggression. Like so many of Bannerman’s Gothic ballads, the poem’s final couplet implies that vengeance is the only noble response possible for the Swiss if they wish to honor their country’s former legacy and reputation: “What heart shall trace thy trophied road, / nor burn to ‘venge thy destiny?” (47-48). Therefore, the same rebellious and antagonist sentiments that motivate the persecuted women in her ballads are presented as an equally viable political solution for a country in turmoil.
While she never makes the connection directly herself, the description of Switzerland’s defeat by Napoleon parallels the political unrest within Bannerman’s native Scotland. Conflicts between the English and the Scottish stretch back to the time of Robert the Bruce and William