We believe that Dorothy Wordsworth’s poignant observations about the beauty of the moon honour to NASA astronaut Christina Koch’s historic venture around the moon and celebrate her return to our home planet.
(9/9)

"...All the Heavens seemed in one perpetual motion when the rain ceased; the moon appearing, now half veiled, and now retired behind heavy clouds, the stars still moving, the road very dirty.” [31 Jan 1798] (8/9)

“When we left home the moon immensely large, the sky scattered over with clouds. These soon closed in, contracting the dimensions of the moon without concealing her..." (cont'd in next post) (7/9)

“William called me into the garden to observe a singular appearance about the moon. A perfect rainbow, within the bow one star, only of colours more vivid. The semi-circle soon became a complete circle, and in the course of three or four minutes the whole faded away.” [30 Jan 1798] (6/9)

"...The withered leaves were coloured with a deeper yellow, a brighter gloss spotted the hollies; again her form became dimmer; the sky flat, unmarked by distances, a white thin cloud.” [27 Jan 1798] (5/9)

“Only once we were through the wood the moon burst through the invisible veil which enveloped her, the shadows of the oaks blackened, and their lines became more strongly marked..." (cont'd in next post)
(4/9)

"...At once the clouds seemed to cleave asunder, and left her in the centre of a black-blue vault. She sailed along, followed by multitudes of stars, small, and bright, and sharp. Their brightness seemed concentrated, (half-moon).” [25 Jan 1798] (3/9)

“The sky spread over with one continuous cloud, whitened by the light of the moon, which, though her dim shape was seen, did not throw forth so strong a light as to chequer the earth with shadows...." (cont'd in next post) (2/9)

Illustration of the Moon against a deep blue background with text at the top reading "PLENILVNIUM. pinxit ad Archetypum M.C.Eimmart a Norimb.

As the WPHP prepares to launch its own mission to explore the range of surviving literary manuscripts by women in the Women’s Manuscript History Project, please enjoy these journal entries from Dorothy Wordsworth’s Alfoxden and Grasmere journals, all from within the same week in January 1798: (1/9)

To learn more about these women, the hundreds of women poets, and the nearly 2500 editions of poetry they wrote, visit our poetry genre, womensprinthistoryproject.com/genre/5. (8/8)

To celebrate NASA astronaut Christina Koch, the first woman to venture around the moon, we want to share some of the many women in the WPHP who studied and contemplated the moon and the heavens. (7/8)

“That while I pour the unavailing tear,
And mourn that hope to me in youth is lost,
Thy light can visionary thoughts impart,
And lead the Muse to soothe a suff’ring heart.”
—”Sonnet to the Moon,” Helen Maria Williams (6/8)

“And while I gaze, thy mild and placid light
Sheds a soft calm upon my troubled breast;
And oft I think—fair planet of the night,
That in thy orb, the wretched may have rest”
—”Sonnet IV, To the Moon,” Charlotte Smith (5/8)

“A wandering cloud will sometimes cross her way,
Her head oft bowing lets the stranger pass,
While golden stars the canopy enlay,
And shadowy forms fly o’er the waving grass.”
—“Moonlight,” Susanna Blamire (4/8)

“When in some river, overhung with green,
The waving moon and the trembling leaves are seen”
—“A Nocturnal Reverie,” Anne Finch (3/8)

“Thou silver deity of secret night…”
—“A Hymn to the Moon,” Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (2/8)

Frontispiece to Charlotte Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets. Black and white engraving of a woman in a white gown stands in a moonlit forest, looking upwards at the moon, with an owl perched above her on a book.

Women poets of the long eighteenth-century took so much inspiration from the moon. Here is our attempt at a brief poetic lunar miscellany: (1/8)

A full digital facsimile of her game is available at Princeton University Library: catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/9912.... (3/3)

To celebrate NASA astronaut Christina Koch, the first woman to venture around the moon, we want to share some of the many women in the WPHP who studied and contemplated the moon and the heavens. To learn more about Alicia Mant, see her Person record: womensprinthistoryproject.com/person/2808. (2/3)

A 19th century star chart titled "A New Game of Astronomy or the Young Student's Guide to a View of the Heavens at Midnight at the Winter Solstice" showing constellations and celestial lines.

Fancy some astronomical play? Alicia Mant’s The Study of the Heavens at Midnight During the Winter Solstice, Arranged as a Game of Astronomy, for the Use of Young Students in that Science (1814) represents one of many attempts by women writers to turn scientific learning into fun and games. (1/3)

To celebrate NASA astronaut Christina Koch, the first woman to venture around the moon, we want to share some of the women in the WPHP who studied and contemplated the moon and the heavens. To learn more about Margaret Bryan, see her Person record: womensprinthistoryproject.com/person/57. (5/5)

The frontispiece to her lectures showed Margaret and her daughters, Ann and Maria, surrounding by astronomical instruments, including a telescope and an armillary sphere, a potent visual reminder of the importance and scope of girls’ education in the late eighteenth century. (4/5)

With roots in Greek, Roman, Egyptian and other cultures, this gendering of the moon is found throughout poetry but has fallen out of use in scientific writing. (3/5)

Margaret Bryan (1759-1836), a scientist and educator, genders the moon as female throughout her A compendious system of astronomy, in a course of familiar lectures, published in quarto in 1797. (2/5)

An engraving of a woman and two girls with scientific instruments in the background.

“The figure of the Moon’s orbit is nearly that of an ellipse; but, owing to the varieties of her affections, and their inequalities amongst themselves, not a regular one.” (1/5)

We remember Barbauld’s “flight so daring” as we honor NASA astronaut Christina Koch’s voyage around the moon. For a full list of Barbauld’s publications, see her Person record: womensprinthistoryproject.com/person/16. (5/5)

One of the most astonishing aspects of this poem is that the speaker appears to imagine herself voyaging through space:

"Seiz’d in thought
On fancy’s wild and roving wing I sail,
From the green borders of the peopled earth,
...
I launch into the trackless deeps of space," (4/5)

“Summer Evening’s Meditation” is the last to appear in Poems, a volume that caused a sensation, going through five editions by 1777 and leading a critic to observe that Barbauld’s poems were “inferior only to the works of Milton and Shakespeare.” (3/5)

Anna Barbauld’s description of the emergence of the moon, eager to push “her brother,” the sun, “down in the sky,” offers one of the eighteenth century’s most tender portraits of the moon. (2/5)

An engraved image of classical profile portraits of Elizabeth Montagu on the left and Anna Letitia Barbauld on the right surrounded by allegorical figures seated on clouds, with engraved text at the bottom.

"...the skies...
...with mild maiden beams
Of temper’d light, invite the cherish’d eye
To wander o’er their sphere; where hung aloft
DIAN’s bright crescent, like a silver bow
New strung in heaven, lifts high its beamy horns
Impatient for the night, and seems to push
Her brother down the sky." (1/5)