English Literature / Unit 12 ENL 1114 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Charlotte Smith's Sonnets
Captions available
The idea
Charlotte Smith wrote Elegiac Sonnets, published in seventeen eighty-four while she shared her husband's debtor's prison. The collection is credited with reviving the sonnet in England and with turning it into an expression of woeful sentiment. She wrote to support her children.
In practice
The sonnet revived, in sorrow.
Where people slip
Smith comes before Wordsworth's sonnets.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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