Elizabeth Singer Rowe
(1674-1737)

woman and poet

Died aged c. 63

Elizabeth Singer Rowe (née Singer, 1674–1737) was an English poet, essayist and fiction writer called "the ornament of her sex and age" and the "Heavenly Singer". She was among 18th-century England's most widely read authors. She wrote mainly religious poetry, but her best-known work, Friendship in Death (1728), is a series of imaginary letters from the dead to the living. Despite a posthumous reputation as a pious, bereaved recluse, Rowe corresponded widely and was involved in local concerns at Frome in her native Somerset. She remained popular into the 19th century on both sides of the Atlantic and in translation. Though little read today, scholars have called her stylistically and thematically radical for her time.

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Commemorated on 1 plaque

In memory of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe poet who died in this house, February 20, 1737 Erected by the Frome Society for Local Study on the occasion of the tricentenary of her birth September 11, 1974

Rook Lane House, Frome, United Kingdom where they died (1737)