William Shenstone, The School-Mistress

Sandro Jung (Shanghai University of Finance and Economics)
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William Shenstone (1714-63), poet, landscape gardener and arbiter of taste, is remembered for a handful of poetic compositions, among which

The School-Mistress

is ranked his most important. Shenstone was an avid reader and continued to revise his poetry throughout his life, a fact explaining the numerous variants of his poems. There are three different versions of

The School-Mistress

, the first published in his juvenile Oxford collection of

Poems on Various Occasions

of 1737. The poem was revised for separate publication in 1742 and further revised and enlarged (35 stanzas) for the publication in its final form in 1748 in Robert Dodsley's

Collection of Poems by Several Hands

.

When Shenstone started writing the poem, James Thomson had already been working on The Castle of Indolence (1748),

1038 words

Citation: Jung, Sandro. "The School-Mistress". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 October 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7653, accessed 19 March 2024.]

7653 The School-Mistress 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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