ABSTRACT
The women poets with whom this chapter is concerned, however, are not just readers of 'eastern' tales, but writers of them. The chapter aims to address some of the works of Romantic women poets and their versions of the Orientwhether encountered through lived experience or through the literary imagination or both—and to consider their perceptions, including their occasional misperceptions, of the Orient. Literary Orientalism developed in a particularly prominent way during the Romantic period, however, and it is useful to place any study of Romantic women poets in the broader perspective offered by this context before addressing their works in more detail. In Hemans's 'The Indian City', Orientals—be they Hindus or Muslims—appear as fierce, irrational beings, given wholly to violence and bloodshed. On this particular count, Felicia Dorothea Hemans retains, or rather resurrects, some deep-seated misperceptions about Orientals.
