Elizabeth Trefusis Explained

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Elizabeth "Ella" Trefusis (16 January 1762 – 8 August 1808) was a Cornish poet of the Romantic period.

Elizabeth Trefusis was born on 16 January 1762, the second daughter of Robert Cotton Trefusis, from the Cornwall Trefusis family, and Anne St. John, daughter of John St John, 12th Baron St John of Bletso. Her brother was Robert Trefusis, 17th Baron Clinton.^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}

Early in life, she wrote two novels, Claribell and Eudora, as well as a pastoral romance, The Cousins. None of these works were published and the manuscripts are lost, but they included various pieces published posthumously in Poems and tales, by Miss Trefusis in 1808. The poems are largely romantic and many the champion women wronged by men. The collection was well-reviewed.

Elizabeth Trefusis died on 8 August 1808.

William Beloe wrote extensively about Trefusis in his controversial memoir The Sexagenarian (1817), but his accuracy has been questioned.

Her work was anthologized in Specimens of British Poetesses (1825).

Bibliography

• Poems and tales, by Miss Trefusis. (2 vol.) London, printed for Samuel Tipper, Leadenhall street, by T. Bensley, Bolt Court, 1808.

Notes and References

1. Book: Boase, George Clement . Bibliotheca cornubiensis. A catalogue of the writings, both manuscript and printed, of Cornishmen, and of works relating to the county of Cornwall, with biographical memoranda and copious literary references . Courtney . William Prideaux . 1874 . London, Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer . University of Michigan.
2. Book: Wright, W. H. K. (William Henry Kearley) . West-country poets: their lives and works. Being an account of about four hundred verse writers of Devon and Cornwall, with poems and extracts .. . 1896 . London, E. Stock . University of California Libraries.
3. Book: Blain, Virginia . The Feminist companion to literature in English : women writers from the Middle Ages to the present . Clements . Patricia . Grundy . Isobel . 1990 . New Haven . Yale University Press . 978-0-300-04854-4.
4. Book: British women poets of the Romantic era : an anthology . 1997 . Baltimore, Md. . Johns Hopkins University Press . 978-0-8018-5430-9.