The reader will find here a list with all the raw numbering of all the texts on this site 1) attributed to Anne Finch in the major and minor manuscript and printed books; 2) all texts not attributed to Anne Finch but but by her and found in manuscript and printed sources; and 3) all the texts where an attribution is uncertain but possible. An interested reader can use this document to check the numbers and sources behind the annotated chronology.

A List of the Sources:

Poems for which there is no manuscript authority: 1 in 1693 Wright, 6 in 1696 Tate (another 1?), 5 in 1701 Gilden, 1 in 1711 anonymous, 39 in 1713 her own, 8 in 1714 Steele (another 1?), 8 altogether in 2 1717 Pope books, 1 in 1740 Prior, 2 in the Birch, for a total of 71 (or adding the extra 2, 73) poems which only exist in printed sources.

Summary of numbers of primary sources (first or only text, whether in MS or printed):

1. =59 items, 2 obliterated, = 57 items, minus 1 for which MS Portland 19 preferred = 56 items
   In MS F-H 283 there appear 59 separate poems; all but seven (four crossed out, three omitted) appear in MS Folger. I have salvaged what I could of the two of the four almost destroyed copies, producing pieces of two more texts, so from MS F-H 283 I have 57 poems. All but the 7; that is 52 of these items reappear in MS Folger.
2. = 2 unacknowledged songs, = 1 item.
   1693 The female Vertuosos. A Comedy By Thomas Wright. London, 1693. With a dedication to Charles Finch, Earl of Winchilsea. This is a play which satirizes French romance, Platonic women who deny sexual attraction and are overlearned, also false male scholars and foolish scientists. Ann's song from F-H 283 (and MS Folger) appears highly praised by the hero and lover, Clerimont, "How Rare: pp. 49-50: Song: Love, thou art best of Human Joys." The second song given to Mariana: For the soft Joys of Love no longer last,/When once the fatal Yea our Lips has past;/Then we begin to court and to comply,/Oft we only Rule, while we deny." is Ann's.
3. =6 items (+ 1 more questionable), all undocumented, = 6 items
   1696 Tate's Miscellanea Sacra there are 12 poems by AF (there is a fourteenth poem which excites interest, printed separately, it is an interesting possibility (an anonymous poem: The Words by a Young Lady: There's no disturbance in the Heavens above), but in early part of book and beyond the "On these words" and feel of sentiment (which could be found in many other writers) there is no quality or external document which one could argue based upon; 6 appear in MS Finch-Hatton and MS Folger, last 6 do not exist in any known manuscript.
4. =5 items (1 a collaboration), all undocumented = 5 items
   1701 Gilden's New Miscellany there are 9 poems by AF, 4 appear in MS F-H 283 and Folger, 5 do not exist in any known manuscript.
5. =1 item.
   On the Death of King James. By a Lady (11613.e.35) and An Elegy on the Death of King James By a Lady (NCI p.v.15). 1701. There are two copies of this pamphlet under two different titles. The first is in the British Library, the second on the New York Public Library. These texts vary from the version of the poem found in the 1713 Miscellany below.
6. =69 items, 1 ALWAYS MISPRINTED, one is pasted over, = 68 items
   In MS Folger there are 121 individual works (not counting the introductory poems by other people to her and not counting the two pieces of poems never copied out), 52 of which appear in MS F-H 283 and 69 appear only in MS Folger. Of the 69 one is pasted over and not recoverable. There is also a 12 page break in the number (p 261, then p 273; one could conjecture there was a poem here which was pulled out. I have not counted these in the items as there is nothing to indicate that there was a poem there for certain.
7. = 5 items, 1 NEVER PRINTED AND THUS BASICALLY UNKNOWN, another in a better text than F-H 283 = 2 items
   In MS Portland Vol 19 there are four early poems, three found in both MS F-H 283 and Folger, one in just F-H 283 (here I will quote this "On Myselfe" rather than the one in MS F-H 283 which I believe is a censored or blurred version; the Portland 19 is sharper), and one wholly unknown in Lady Winchelsea's handwriting which must be after 1712 since she signs Lady Winchelsea.
8. =1 questionable item, contemporary attribution not seconded = 1 item
   1711 anonymous pamphlet, The Free-Thinkers: A Poem in Dialogue, printed and sold by booksellers of london and Westminster (entered in Stationer's Register 7 March by Luttrell), attribution to Lady Whincesea" in MS NN-B in Berg Collection.
9. = 1 poem, since the poem is in Heneage's hand, this is text = 1 item
   MSS Swift, Pierpont Morgan Library. In the Pierpont Morgan Library among the papers known as the Swift MSS (not paginated) is a transcription of a poem entitled "To Mr Jervas" in the hand of Heneage Finch, later the 4th Earl of Winchilsea. From Cameron Appendix D, also pp 122 and Footnotes to Ch 21, NO. 20.
10. = 2 items, but no new poems
    MS4807: this is the number of the manuscript in the British Library of the drafts of Pope's Iliad. It contains on the back of one of the sheets in Richard Steele's handwriting a letter dated July 26, 1711, and on the next page Lady Winchilsea's To Mr Jervas. f 161v, f. 162v. It also contains on the back of the next sheets a letter from Edward Basingfield dated May 26, 1712, and on the next sheet Lady Winchilsea's "to Mr Pope in answer to a coppy of verses (ff 209v-210r.) The texts also contains Pope's corrections (!) of Lady Winchilsea's text in Pope's hand.
11. =10 poems (1 a collaboration, + 1 more questionable poem from Dacier), 8 undocumented and not found elsewhere = 8 items
    1714 Steele (and Tonson's) Poetical Miscellanies contain 10 poems, 8 of which have no manuscript authority and for which 1714 Steele becomes, therefore, the primary text ("A Sigh" is in Folger MS and "To Mr Jervas" in both MSS Swift in Heneage's hand and MS 4807, draft of Pope's Iliad, with accompany identifying letter by Richard Steele), although 2 use same source as her "Melinda on an Insippid Beauty," a 3rd (the 11th poem not included here, the Ode to Venus) may take line from Longepierre's translations from Bion; 9 follow her "To Mr. Jervas ... By the Right Honourable the Countess of W--" (including "The Sigh"), before we come to a poem firmly attributed "To another Hand." As I say, an eleventh, a translation of an Ode by Sappho (printed separately and hence not included above) has to my ears marks of her other translations from Madame Dacier and Longepierre, but there are no external identification and style is wholly impersonal. Why separate it off?
12. =39 items
    1713 Miscellaneous Poems by a Lady there are 88 items (2 of which are drawn from 1 now censured and considerably altered poem in MS Folger), 39 of which are new. Of the 39 new poems none appear elsewhere in MS.

    187 Items

13. =4 poems 2 NEVER PRINTED AND THUS BASICALLY UNKNOWN = 4 items
    In MS Additional 4457 there are 7 poems, 4 new, plus a letter which shows that one Mrs Lucas sent Dr. Birch Lady Winchilsea's "Epilogue," in which the writer tells Birch "when the Epilogue was wrote, there was not the least idea of it's apearing before such Judges as himself"; Birch printed her Epilogue to Nicholas Rowe's Jane Shore; there is no extant MS copy; there were, therefore, originally 8 poems in this MS, 5 of which appeared no where else, from which Birch chose to print 3 and 1 by Pope: "The prodigy" ("Protect the State…");" Lady Winchelsea's to the foregoing Verses. To Mr. Pope. ("Disarm'd with so genteel an Air," together with Pope's to her occasioning it); and "To a fellow Scribbler" ("Prithee Friend that hedge behold); he omittted " To Mrs Arabella Marrow upon the Death of Lady Marrow" and "To the Countess of Hartford on her Lord's Birthday"; of the other 3 which appear in MS Wellesley he printed "To a fellow scribbler" and omitted "A Letter to Mrs Arrabella Marow" and "To the Hon ble M rs Thynne after twelfth day;" from the letter he then went back and took Lady Winchilsea's Epilogue to Nicholas Rowe's Jane Shore and never returned it. MS Additional may stem from Lady Winchilsea's originals (in her drawer); they differ from MS Wellesley in ways which demonstrate they were not copied out from MS Wellesley or vice versa.
14. =8 poems, one censored found in MS Wellesley = 7 items
    1717 Poems on Several Occasions, an anonymous miscellany actually by Pope contains 7 poems for which no manuscript authority exists.
15. =1 poem = 1 item
    1717 The Works of Mr Pope contains 1 poem which does not exist in MS ("THe Muse, of ev'ry heav'nly gift allow'd).
16. = 54 poems = 54 items
    In MS Wellesley there are 54 (counting the one which exists in two distinct versions as two). There is a significant return to religious poetry precisely of the type that she wrote in MS F-H and printed in 1696 Tate, with the addition of a new "kind," the impersonal dramatic narrative, altogether 16 (or if you do not count her epistle to Catherine Fleming which prefaces her paraphrase of Eccles) or 15 out of 53. She also returns to ideas in MS Finch-Hatton and Tate and 1701 Gilden ("The Retirement") autobiographical poems, such as it was strange and wholly unexpected that she should end up living a life of solitude, cut off from society.
17. = 4 items, but no new poems
    MS Portland Vol 20 there are 4 manuscript poems from later in Lady Winchilsea's career: two appear in MS Wellesley, and two in MS Harleian 7316 (a version of "A New Ballad to the tune of All You Ladies now at Land" is corrected by a hand which has seen and is following some earlier version of the copy in MS Harleian 7316). No new poems; no new texts. Curious thing here is that the ballad to Catherine Fleming refers to the ballad to the sparkling whigs and gives impression these two were those written together.
18. =14 poems, 10 new, 8 undocumented = 10 items
    In MS Harleian 7316 there are 14 poems by Lady Winchilsea, 6 of which are documentably hers (1 the missing companion ballad, another another song of South Seas which is also in MS Lansdowne 852); two of the undocumented very persuasive internally.
19. =1 poem NEVER PRINTED AND THUS BASICALLY UNKNOWN = 1 item
    MS Finch-Hatton 282 is Heneage's diary in his own hand; it contains a fragment of one poem.

    264 Items

20. =18 poems, 2 undocumented, 2 found in another MS (Harleian: "Cosmelia's charmes ..."; MS28101: "Ye Lads and ye Lasses that live at Long-Leat) = no new items
    The Hive, Vols I and II, a superb 2 volume set which contains 18 of Ann's poems scattered in pleasing manner throughout the set.
21. =2 poems, 1 in MS Harleian = 1 item
    1740 Adrian Drift put together 2 volume edition of Matthew Prior's prose and poetry; the first volume is made up of Prior's prose, the second volume, poetry, is prefaced by poems to Prior, 2 by Ann to Prior, one early in her career, the other late, perhaps both supplied by George Waldron or someone or had his poem (which follows these) plus two by her.
22. = 3 texts, all exist elsewhere, but 1 is complete and correct only here = 1 item
    MS28101, Ashley Cooper's Family Miscellany, dated around 1740: an MS of approximately 245 pages and poems and prose pieces collected by Ashley Cowper, Clerk of the Parliament, a nephew of the first Earl Cowper and uncle of William Cowper: there are 3 texts by Lady Winchilsea; part of her poem "in Praise of the Invention of Writing" (listed as "by a Lady"); a poem called in 1724 Hive"On a Gentleman's sitting upon a lady's Cremona fiddle"; here short title is "The Fiddles Farewell"; and Ann's "Ballad" to Catherine Fleming at Coleshill; although the 1724 Hive precedes the text for the song of the fiddle, from collation it is clear Hive text is corrupt and garbled version.
23. = 6 poems, all but 2 exist elsewhere = 2 items
    1741 Thomas Birch's General Dictionary. He prints 7 poems having to do with Lady Winchilsea, 6 by her, 1 by Pope, one of which (The Spleen) is found in the Folger (Birch takes his text from Gilden's 1701 New Miscellany), one by her and the one by Pope in MS Wellesley; 2 in MS Additional 4457, leaving 2 which do not exist in any known manuscript. The Epilogue to Jane Shore may come from MS Additional 4457 (as noted above); the poem to Lady Hertford which in its title we are told was written to accompany a gift of a volume of poems to Lady Hertford by Lady Winchilsea may have been given to Thomas Birch by Lady Hertford. Birch says there are a large number of poems by Lady Winchilsea not yet in print; he cites "the Reverend Mr. Creake" and a "Lady of distinguished merit" as holding this large number. Perhaps the Folger descends from Creake who became Heneage's chaplain and whose library was sold with Heneage's and is listed in a catalogue of T. Osborne printed 1738, offering individual volumes for sale; the Wellesley may descend from Lady Hertford.
24. 1 poem exists elsewhere = no new poems
    MS Lansdowne 852; this contains "Ombre and basset set aside" with an ascription to Lady Winchilsea; the text is not as clear as the MS Harleian 7316; but the ascription is the only one we have. Found and printed by Ault, 1938, p 299)

268 Items + 3 obliterated= 271 in Masterlist Annotated Chronology

This appears to be the end of all new or possible unknown poems, and therefore an end of the primary sources.

Page Last Updated: 8 January 2003.