Fanny Greville, born Frances Macartney about 1724 and dead on 28 July 1789, occupies a distinctive if elusive place in eighteenth-century English poetry. Her surviving reputation rests principally on a small number of poems, above all “A Prayer for Indifference,” rather than on a large published oeuvre or a public literary career of the sort enjoyed by many of her male contemporaries. Yet the very modesty of her exta…
Compare Poets
Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Poet A
Fanny Greville
Poet B
Christopher Smart
Compare two related contemporaries
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 60%
Blended 60%
Swap sides
Another related pair
Christopher Smart was born on 11 April 1722 at Fairlawne, the estate near Shipbourne in Kent where his father, Peter Smart, worked as steward to the Vane family. He died on 21 May 1771, not 1770 as has sometimes been reported, in London after a life marked by extraordinary accomplishment, recurrent distress, financial insecurity, and long periods of confinement. Few English poets of the eighteenth century have seemed…
“He walks as if he had fouled his small-clothes, and looks as if he smelt it.”
In time
Fanny Greville
Christopher Smart
1722
1789
They overlapped for 47 years (1724–1770).
When Fanny Greville was born, Christopher Smart was about 2.
Fanny Greville was about 46 when Christopher Smart died.
On the map
About 178 km separate England from Shipbourne, Kent, England. Both have ground in England.
Fanny Greville
Christopher Smart
Themes they return to
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Shared
Fanny Greville only
From the biographies
Fanny Greville: county tyrone, anglo-irish, fulke greville, a prayer for indifference, the court of death, samuel johnson, eighteenth-century poetry, culture of sensibility. Christopher Smart: fairlawne, shipbourne, peter smart, winifred griffiths smart, durham school, pembroke college, john newbery, mrs. mary midnight.
Poems that secretly rhyme
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
The world around them
While their lives overlapped
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Fanny Greville
1785
Relocation to Bath
Christopher Smart
Emotional landscapes
Fanny Greville: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Christopher Smart: Wonder, Tenderness, Joy.