Anne Hunter

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Anne Home Hunter (born March 13, 1742 in Waterford , Ireland , † January 7, 1821 in London ) was a British poet and composer of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and the wife of the Scottish anatomist and surgeon John Hunter , with the she had four children. Because of her close friendship and her influence on the composer Joseph Haydn , she is often referred to as his muse .

Anne Home as the thoughtful Muse (Engl. The Pensive Muse ). Engraving by WW Ryland, after a lost portrait by Angelica Kauffman , 1767.

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Hunter's mostly dark poems were included in a large number of anthologies from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Her song compositions - usually published anonymously - were not as successful and were often replaced by those of other composers. Hunter's most famous poems were those that Joseph Haydn set to music during his first stay in London in 1791 or 1792. They were published in 1794 as VI Original Canzonettas . After the death of her husband John in 1793, Hunter wrote, among other things, a libretto for Haydn's oratorio The Creation and 14 poems for George Thomson's Select Collection of Original Welsh Airs . In 1802 Anne published around 60 of her poems in the volume Poems , which saw a second edition as early as 1803. A year later, a collection of humorous poems followed under the title The Sports of Genii .

According to her biographer Caroline Grigson, Hunter was one of the most successful songwriters in the second half of the 18th century.

literature

  • Caroline Grigson: The Life and Poems of Anne Hunter. Haydn's Tuneful Voice , Liverpool 2009, ISBN 978-1-84631-191-8 .
  • Joy M. Currie: Poet and Lyricist Anne Hunter: More than Haydn's Muse , in: Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period, ed. by Nancy Kushigian, Alexandria, VA, 2002.

Web links

Commons : Anne Hunter  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hull and Berwickshire are given as other possible birthplaces, but according to Caroline Grigson, The Life and Poems of Anne Hunter. Haydn's Tuneful Voice , Liverpool 2009, p. 16 there is no evidence to support this assumption. Grigson also points out that March 13, 1743 is also a possible date of birth (ibid.).
  2. ↑ Grigson, Life and Poems of Anne Hunter , p. 12.
  3. ^ "Anne Home Hunter [...] was one of the most successful song writers of the second half of the eighteenth century." Grigson, Life and Poems of Anne Hunter , p. 12.
personal data
SURNAME Hunter, Anne
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hunter, Anne Home (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British poet and composer
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1742
PLACE OF BIRTH Waterford
DATE OF DEATH January 7, 1821
Place of death London