Della Cruscans

He was answered by Hannah Cowley's "The Pen," published two weeks later under the name of "Anna Matilda," their literary flirtation played out in the pages of the journal, and the Della Cruscan phenomenon spread to England.

Other members of the English Della Cruscan circle were "Laura Maria" (Mary Robinson), "Benedict" (Edward Jerningham), "Reuben" (Greatheed), Frederick Pilon, and others.

Subject to criticism in their own time, notably William Gifford's savage verse satires The Baviad (1791) and The Maeviad (1795), subsequent literary historians seem incapable of writing about the group without using terms like "excess," "nonsense,"[2] "affected," or "copious.

According to David Hill Radcliffe, "While the Della Cruscan school enjoyed but brief reign, it had the effect of popularizing the highly literary romantic modes previously associated largely with university poets.

"[5] Further, "While the Della Cruscans did not invent the newspaper conversation in verse, they exerted a potent influence over contributors to British and American periodicals that extended for decades.