English poet Jane Barker (~1652-1732) was born into a gentry family, converted to Catholicism probably during the reign of James II and followed the Stuart court into French exile for over a decade (King, “JB”). Being largely self-educated, she mastered Latin and medicine with help from her anatomist brother Edward (King, “JB”). After his death at the age of twenty-five in 1675 (King, “JB”), Barker wrote various poems on Edward.
One of these poems, published in her 1688 collection Poetical recreations, “A Farewell to POETRY. WITH A Long Digression on ANATOMY” simultaneously honours her brother’s heritage and promotes her position as a woman in a personal, social circle of learned men. The poem thus remains emotionally ambiguous between honest mournful meditation and confident self-representation.
The poem begins with the persona – arguably identifiable as Barker herself – bidding farewell to her good friend poetry, as after her brother’s death, she now has to pay tribute to him by turning to his domain, i.e. anatomy (cp. Barker, “FtP” 99).
FArewell, my gentle Friend, kind Poetry, 1
For we no longer must Acquaintance be;
Though sweet and charming to me as thou art,
Yet I must dispossess thee of my Heart.
On new Acquaintance now I must dispense 5
What I receiv’d from thy (a) bright influence.
Wise Aristotle and Hippocrates,
Galen, and the most Wise Socrates,
Aesculapius, whom first I should have nam’d,
And all Apollo’s younger brood so fam’d, 10
Are they with whom I must Acquaintance make,
Who will, no doubt, receive me for the sake
Of Him (b) from whom they did expect to see
New Lights to search Nature’s obscurity.
---
Footnotes:
- Having learned Latin by reading the Latin Poets.
- My Brother.
(Barker, “FtP” 99)
Barker seems to feel the need to pursue her brother’s way, after his untimely demise, and follows a cast of famous physicians and anatomists on an imaginary voyage through the body – through the digestive system, to the liver, and once around the blood circuit to the brain and finally to the heart, where the physician Richard Lower mourns the death of Edward.
As the whole course through the body is imagined as the persona’s journey through different spaces, the organs and body parts are poetically represented, e.g. in architectural metaphors – “Pillars of strong Bones”, “Walls […] of carneous Parts”, ”the Kitchin call’d […] Ventriculus” (Barker, “FtP” 100-101). These images seem to offer themselves due to associations with structure, stability, and compartmentalisation. The live-spending liver (lat. jecur) is personified as “Madam Jecur” (Barker, “FtP” 101) who is busy producing blood from digested food. The personification evokes traditional gender roles of women as housekeepers, but it also assigns a female character a vital role in the body and great agency in this almost alchemical process of producing blood. Such poetical representation of the body is often supplemented with learned commentary in Latin: when visiting the stomach, Barker notes intestinal illnesses (“Morbi in infimo ventre, diarrhea etc.”, Barker, “FtP” 101), and even positions herself in anatomical and medical debate when she follows Galen on the role of the liver against common opinion (“Secundum opinionem Galenis. Contra receptaculum commune.” Barker, “FtP” 101-102).
The poem appears in the Magdalen collection of Barker’s manuscripts (MS 343, ff. 127r-30v), was first published in Poetical Recreations in 1688 and appears later again in the 1723 Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies (cp. Folger Shakespeare Library). A modern edition of the “Farewell” has been published in the print and online anthology Early Modern Women on the Fall, edited by Dowd and Festa. The inclusion in the edition is based on Barker’s discussion of the Edenic lapse in her poem. Yet the scientific elements of the “Farewell”, though openly apparent in one way, could and should be addressed in fuller fashion.
By explicitly claiming that she studies various famous physicians and by depicting state-of-the-art anatomical knowledge in her adventurous quest through the body, Barker demonstrates her unusual learning. As the poem was probably originally written for a smaller coterie audience in a semi-private, semi-public manner (cf King, “PRST” 564–65), for the learned circle of Edward’s anatomist friends, its primary purpose was presumably not to teach anatomy in verse. The readers surely were well-versed in what Barker portrayed in her poem. The “Farewell to Poetry” , therefore, is less about spreading knowledge than about displaying knowledge. The footnotes, for example, are performances of learnedness: by their concise precision, the Latin language, and the localization in scientific debates, Barker confidently demonstrates her agency among groups from that she as a woman is excluded. Elsewhere (p. 103), she stages a debate between different anatomists on the design and function of the brain. While she retains a passive observing role, she nevertheless shows that she is knowledgeable enough of anatomy to be aware of differing opinions and traditions within the field. Barker does not have her persona participate in the debate or contribute a theory of her own, but nevertheless the persona asserts that Harvey “by Fact and Reason did confute” the “trivial small dispute” (Barker “FtP” 103). Being able to comment on the debate is a subtle display of agency and competence.
Barker discusses the female exclusion in early modern scientific circles in the “Farewell” explicitly, when she concedes that women “precipitated first” (Barker, “FtP” 101), but directly follows this up with a complaint of the unfair prejudice against women by men in learning. The Edenic Tree of Knowledge appears in a similar manner also in her poem “An Invitation to my Friends at Cambridge”. After praising the beneficial peace and virtue of her rural setting, the persona – again presumably identifiable with Barker – complains:
I shou’d conclude that such it really were,
But that the Tree of Knowledge won’t grow here:
Though in its culture I have spent some time, 45
Yet it disdains to grow in our cold Clime
Where it can neither Fruit nor Leaves produce
Good for its owner, or the publick use.
How can we hope our Minds then to adorn
With any thing with which they were not born; 50
Since we’re deny’d to make this small advance,
To know their nakedness and ignorance?
[…]
Whilst kinder fate for you do’s contribute
Luxurious Banquets of this dainty Fruit.
Whose Tree most fresh and flourishing do’s grow,
E’er since it was transplanted amongst you[.] 60
(Barker, “IFC” 3-4)
Since the Fall, it seems, only women are barred from the Tree of Knowledge (cp. King, “PRST” 556–57). While the contrast and the play with different climates might also suggest the differences between Cambridge and the persona’s presumed rural setting, the context of the collection of poems, with Barker as a single woman in correspondence with a whole group of academically trained men, points us more towards reading the excerpt as a commentary on gender differences in access to learning. Kathryn R. King, after careful analysis of Poetical Recreations, Barker’s correspondence, and other historical sources, argues that
[Verse] seems to have offered Barker an entree-of sorts-into the centers of learning from which she as a woman was officially excluded […] Barker's writing-into-being a network of literary friendships might be read as a kind of Cavendish-like manuever [sic] intended to construct herself at the center of a textualized world – not blazing exactly, nor entirely new – but instinct with intellectual possibilities unavailable outside the domain of literary exchange. (King, “PRST” 553)
King thus sees Barker’s anatomical poetry as a subversive reaction to gender roles in seventeenth-century science, drawing a parallel to Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, who participated in contemporary debates by using fiction and verse for epistemological and natural philosophical output. The freedom and possibilities of using verse to enter, criticize, or substitute male-dominated learned circles makes gender a highly relevant aspect when looking at early modern scientific poetry.
On a different note: interestingly, the edition by Dowd and Festa omits the three stanzas at the end of the poem that are arguably directed at Barker’s deceased brother (Barker, “FtC” 104-106). They shall be provided here. In the course of the poem, the speaker ventures ever deeper into the human body, its gangways and cavities – “Labyrinths […] / In such, Old Daedalus ne’er was” (Barker, “FtP” 102). While the speaker, Barker presumably, after the meeting with Lower remains in the body (both locally and metaphorically, as she is still alive), the view rockets up into heaven, surveying all earthly dross from a distance outside of time and matter:
I.
BUT now, my Dear, thou know’st more than Art can, 105
Thou know’st the substance of the Soul of Man;
Nay and its Maker too, whose Pow’rfull breath
Gave Immortality to sordid Earth.
What Joys, my Dear, do Thee surround,
As no where else are to be found, 110
Love, Musick, Physick, Poetry;
And in each Art each Artist do’s abound,
And alls converted to Divinity.
II.
No drooping Autumn there,
No chilling Winter do’s appear; 115
No scorching Heat, nor budding Spring,
Nor Sun do’s Seasons there divide.
Yet all things do transcend their native pride;
Which fills, but do’s not nauseate,
No change or want of any thing 120
Which time to periods or perfection brings;
But yet diversity of state,
And of Souls happiness there is no date.
III.
Should’st thou, my Dear, look down on us below,
To see how busie we 125
Are in Anatomie,
Thoud’st laugh to see our Ignorance;
Who somethings miss, & somethings hit by chance,
For we, at best, do but in twilight go,
Whilst thou see’st all by th’ most Transcendent light, 130
Compar’d to which the Sun’s bright Rays are night:
Yet so Caelestial are thine Eyes,
That Light can neither dazzle nor surprise;
For all things there
So perfect are, 135
And freely they their qualities dispence,
Without the mixture of Terrestrial dross,
Without hazard, harm or loss;
O joys Eternal satiating Sence,
And yet the Sence the smallest part in gross. 140
(Barker, “FtC” 104-106)
These lines return the focus to the deceased Edward after an arguably quite “Long Digression on ANATOMY”, perhaps protecting Barker from the charge of indecent irreverence to her brother’s memory and adding another layer to her engagement with anatomy: sensual, empirical knowledge of the material world, praised earlier in the poem, is now reduced to trifling pastimes. The soul, one with its maker and surrounded by all arts (poetry among them!) sees clearer (cp. ll. 105-113, 129-131). Edward’s soul is now in heaven, and is thus removed from the uncertain and fluctuating life on earth. Barker lists the seasons that the soul is now absent from (cp. ll. 114-117), representing the inconstancy of the world, and mourns how on earth truth is only found by pure chance (cp. ll. 128-129). Barker balances the poem between natural philosophy, poetry, and religion, between accepting and undermining women’s position in society and science.
Sources and Further Reading
Barker, Jane. “A Farewell to POETRY: WITH a Long Digression on ANATOMY.” PR, pp. 99–106.
---. “An Invitation to My Friends at Cambridge.”PR, pp. 1–4.
---. Poetical Recreations: Consisting of Original Poems, Songs, Odes, &c. With Several New Translations […]. Printed for Benjamin Crayle, at the Peacock and Bible, at the West-end of St. Pauls., 1688.
CELM Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts: Jane Barker - Verse. Based on the Index of English Literary Manuscripts 1450-1700 by Peter Beal, Folger Shakespeare Library. celm.folger.edu/authors/barkerjane.html#magdalen-college-oxford_id387776. Accessed 27 Nov. 2025.
Dowd, Michelle M., and Thomas Festa, editors. Early Modern Women on the Fall: An Anthology. ACMRS Press, 2012, asu.pressbooks.pub/early-modern-women-on-the-fall/.
King, Kathryn R. “Jane Barker, Poetical Recreations, and the Sociable Text.” ELH, vol. 61, no. 3, 1994, pp. 551–70.
---. “Barker, Jane (Bap. 1652, D. 1732), Poet and Novelist.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online, edited by Colin Matthew et al., Oxford University Press, 2004-2027, www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-37153. Accessed 12 Nov. 2025.