Nineteenth-century poet and playwright Felicia Hemans blends bold, at times nationalist, heroism with meek humility in both her fictional and historic characters. She portrays this mixture in diverse forms, from the dissenting Protestant figures of exile and imprisonment in her poems “The Forest Sanctuary” (
The Forest Sanctuary and Other Poems, 1825) and “The Prisoners’ Evening Service” (
Scenes and Hymns of Life, with Other Religious Poems, 1834), to the devoutly Catholic heroine of her poem “Joan of Arc, in Rheims” (
Records of Woman, 1828). Though Hemans saw
TheForest Sanctuaryas her most artistically successful work,
Records of Womanwas by far the most profitable, as well as “most personal of Hemans’s books” (Feldman 1999: xi). Hemans dedicated this wildly…
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Citation: Duquette, Natasha Aleksiuk. "Felicia Hemans". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 October 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5117, accessed 23 November 2024.]
