ABSTRACT

In the Della Cruscan newspaper dialogues, Mary Robinson found a supple, versatile model for her professional identity and for literary production, one through which she could display her masculine knowledge, her verbal and metrical ingenuity and her passionate sensibility. From the start of her literary career, Robinson's literary performances were always dialogic, acts of intersubjectivity formed in relation to another she hoped would respond. In the early 1780s, Robinson honed her theatrical skills on and off the stage to forge a collection of portable practices and dramatic tools for refashioning herself on multiple public fronts. The Della Cruscans have been reimagined in recent scholarship: hyperbolic, pseudonymous, emotionally extravagant, ephemeral, but also erotic, ludic, theatrical, improvisational, intertextual and, most importantly, pre-Romantic. Della Cruscan sensibility offended some, especially because women were involved in public displays of supposedly private, erotic moments. Ainsi was a pivotal moment, according to Robinson's readers both then and now.