Women’s Political Poetry in Commonplace Books during the American Revolution

This paper will explore how women during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century addressed political issues in their private writing, using the poetry they wrote and compiled into commonplace books. It will focus on a group of women poets who lived in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, primarily concentrating on Annis Stockton, Milcah Martha Moore, and Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson. The commonplace genre utilized by the women straddled the line between the public and private spheres as they circulated the books amongst a small group of people, allowing them to express their political opinions in a semi-private context. In their poetry, they inserted themselves into a political debate with the American Revolution acting as a catalyst for their involvement. The women also blurred the lines between the public and private spheres when articulating their political beliefs in their poetry. Their experiences in the private sphere influenced their political beliefs and commitments. At the same time, politics intruded into their private lives and shaped their domestic situations. For the women, the personal and political were intertwined and inseparable, and they did not separate the two spheres in their writings.