Following the Muse: Inspiration, Prophecy, and Deference in the Poetry of Emma Lyon (1788–1870), Anglo-Jewish Poet

Jewishness and Judaism

“…Though the focus of this essay is women writers, it is important to note that key works by earlier and Victorian male writers influenced women's representations of Judaism and Jews. For example, there were numerous revivals of Shakespeare's play the Merchant of Venice in the Victorian era that, along with highlighting intensely negative portrayals of Shylock, also drew renewed attention to the figure of Shylock's daughter, Jessica, who was often interpreted as being "rescued" from her Jewish father through her chosen conversion to Christianity and marriage to a non-Jew, which is highly celebrated at the end of the play, as is her father's forced conversion by the court (Ragussis 1995;Scrivener 2011. Along with these powerful representations of Jews from this sixteenth-century English drama, there were more contemporary literary representations of Jews in Victorian England that also influenced representations of Jewishness in the period.…”

“…Karen Weisman has included Emma Lyon (1788-1870) as an important "Romantic era Jewish poet" (Weisman, 2018). Lyon's Miscellaneous Poems (1812), while not falling specifically in the Victorian era, is a notable precedent in the history of Anglo-Jewish women's poetry (Scrivener 2005). In 1839, the Moss sisters, Celia and Marion, published Early Efforts: A volume of poems by the Misses Moss of the Hebrew Nation, Aged 18 and 16.…”