Copying Hannah Griffitts

This chapter examines verses written and copied by Philadelphia Quaker poet Hannah Griffitts and the circumstances under which they were circulated. It argues that Griffitts’ experiences in print, in contrast with the agency over verse grouping and distribution which manuscript provided, determined her preference for manuscript circulation. It surveys some of the more frequently copied poems circulated by Griffitts and her contemporaries, and compares Griffitts’ own modes of transmitting those verses with those employed by two of her cousins, Milcah Martha Moore and Deborah Norris Logan, in addition to other women in the Quaker community. The chapter concludes with a case study of Griffitts’ transcription and possible distribution of work by a poet coming from outside her own familial circle—Phillis Wheatley’s ‘Atheism’—and how that impacts consideration of Griffitts’ modes and methods of circulation, and the role of that circulation in the construction of both the coterie and the canon.