Works
- Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, published in 1766 as a quarto edition by Thomas Davies with Johnson adding a preface and several prose and verse pieces. First advertised in 1750, there were waspish claims from Anna's friends that Johnson had not put himself out in getting it produced, though it was moderately successful and earned the author about £150.
- A dictionary of philosophical terms probably inspired by Johnson's own Dictionary - begun in 1754 but abandoned despite Johnson's support (he wrote to Richardson the printer that ‘she understands chimistry and many other arts’).
- Occasional verses, such as "On the Death of Sir Erasmus Philipps, Unfortunately Drowned in the River Avon".
Her Dictionary of National Biography entry states that "as a writer Williams had craft but not genius... capable effective if conventional ... verses". Miscellanies is a collection of disparate pieces, verse, prose, and dramatic fragments. Alexander Pope is an influence, as seen in this quotation:
- For me, contented with a humble state
- 'Twas ne'er my care, or fortune, to be great.
Read more about this topic: Anna Williams (poet)
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“Now they express
All that’s content to wear a worn-out coat,
All actions done in patient hopelessness,
All that ignores the silences of death,
Thinking no further than the hand can hold,
All that grows old,
Yet works on uselessly with shortened breath.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to the another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own travelling brotherhood.”
—Freya Stark (b. 1893–1993)
“We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)