{"collection":"Classics","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/cla/saph/sap/index.htm","path":"cla/saph/sap/index.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/cla/saph/sap/index.htm","text":"Mary Robinson, (above) [b. 1758 d. 1800] composed this sonnet sequence about the\nlegendary death of the famous poetess Sappho.\nRobinson led a dramatic life.\nHer father, a sea captain, abandoned her mother and five children\nwhen she was still a child.\nHer mother started a girl's school to support herself,\nand Robinson was teaching in it at age 14.\nShe later trained for the stage and became a professional actress,\ngrowing into a legendary beauty.\nShe began a sensational affair when she was 22 with the Prince of Wales,\nthe future George IV, after he saw her play Perdita\nin a production of The Winter's Tale.\nAfter the Prince spurned her, she became a pioneering female author.\nShe wrote novels, poetry, plays and feminist essays.\nShe died in her early forties.\nSappho here differs radically from the version that\nwould emerge in the 19th century.\nIn fact, this had really been the normative view of Sappho since\nthe Renaissance.\nIn this sonnet sequence, which does not appear to contain\nany actual lines from Sappho,\nSappho is the tortured lover of a boatman, Phaon.\nShe follows him to Sicily, and finally leaps off the Leucadian cliffs\nto her doom.\nIt is not unlikely that this tale of love gone wrong appealed to Robinson\non a very personal level.\nRobinson, during her lifetime, was known as 'the English Sappho,' and\nhas recently been rediscovered as a feminist trailblazer.","title":"Sappho and Phaon Index","type":"page"}