Author: Blevins, Louisa
Title: Tears And Smiles
Description: C L Lordan, Romsey, 1880, 1st edition. Cloth, G. 64pp, cloth unevenly faded & with a small nick at the head of the spine, endpapers foxed & grubby and with occasional light foxing to the pages, occasional dusty mark & ink splash, a fair copy of an uncommon item. Hardback , no dustjacket. ¶ A slim collection of poems from the Romsey poet Louisa Blevins [ 1815 - 1885 ] . She wrote 3 poetry collections between 1863 - 1880. The wife of an umbrella & china repairman in Romsey she suffered from melancholia & spent time in the Hampshie County Lunatic Asylum, indeed in 1855, whilst at the HLA under suicide watch she managed to blind herself in one eye. Blevins alludes to her depression in the dedication to Lady Mount Temple - 'a condition involving protracted suffering, not only from extreme nervous and physical depility but the more formidable evil of permanent blindness, must be regarded as one that can offer little inducement to any kind of enterprise of active effort.'

Keywords: poetry, poems, depression, insanity