Sir, Robert O'Byrne in reviewing Doctor Johnson's Women by Norma Clarke in Weekend (June 9th) says: "Here is one of those rare exercises in literary history which not only manages to exhume largely forgotten authors but also present them to a new generation of readers in the most enchanting manner. The outcome is a hunger to re-read the original texts . . ."
Some of this hunger can be satisfied in Eighteenth-Century Women Poets edited by Roger Lonsdale, Oxford University Press, which was published in paperback in 1990.
This 555-page book covers 112 poets the first of whom was born in 1656, and they range from the high-born to women like Ann Yearsley who delivered milk to one of her sponsors and who is mentioned in the review. I hope this most interesting book is still available to readers. - Yours, etc.,
Bernadette Quinn, Killiney, Co Dublin.