“Thou with earth’s music answerest to the sky”: Felicia Hemans, Mary Ann Browne, and the myth of poetic sisterhood

Abstract

Felicia Hemans (nee Browne) and her near contemporary, Mary Anne Browne, have often been (erroneously) taken for sisters, although in fact they never met. This paper cites evidence to correct this misapprehension, which has proved strangely tenacious; but its main purpose is to point to the elusive dynamic of similitude and contrast underlying nineteenth‐century models of sisterhood, suggesting that this cultural expectation may have been projected onto perceptions of the characteristic tenor of each of the two women's poetic productions. It argues that the (mis)reading of their relationship as one of sisterhood may have been driven by more than simple biographical error. © 1995 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.