Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- Note on Texts -- Introduction. "The will of a social being" -- I. Two Women & Poetic Tradition -- 1 Charlotte Smith's Emigrants and the Politics of Allusion -- Epic Interactions in a Crisis of Sympathy -- "tho not on politics on a very popular & interesting subject" -- Classing The Emigrants -- Gendering War -- 2 Mary Wollstonecraft Re:Reading the Poets -- What Poetry Makes Happen -- All About Eve -- or, the Genesis of Feminist Literary Criticism -- Wollstonecrafting Poetry -- 3 The Poets' "Wollstonecraft" -- II. Gender Interactions, Generative Interactions: Two Wordsworths -- 4 Lyrical Ballads and the Pregnant Words of Men's Passions -- Engendering Passion -- The Gender of "The Poet" -- The Gender of Passion -- A Man Speaking -- Female Naming -- 5 William's Sister: Alternatives of Alter Ego -- The "mission with which she was charged" -- Wild Girls, Wild Boys -- William's "I" and Dorothy's "very words" -- 6 Dorothy's Conversation with William -- What Makes "a Poet"? -- The Poetry That Dorothy Makes -- Dorothy Wordsworth's Shadow-Narrative -- III. A Public Attraction -- 7 Gazing on "Byron": Separation and Fascination -- An Intense Curiosity -- The Separation -- Fare thee well! -- "Byron" & Byron -- Byron by Parody -- The Last and Lasting Byron -- 8 Byron and the Muse of Female Poetry -- She-musing on Byron -- The First Female Byron -- Marrying Byron -- Chosen Ears -- Signing on to Byron -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.