How did the cult of sensibility influence Anna Seward’s Louisa?

Anna Seward’s Louisa, a Poetical Novel, in Four Epistles (1784) was deeply influenced by the 18th-century cult of sensibility, a literary movement that prioritized emotional responsiveness, sympathy, and the analysis of feeling over rationalism.12

As an epistolary novel written in verse, Louisa is explicitly described as being infused with the era’s characteristic focus on delicate sensations and the "wisdom of the heart". By adopting this style, Seward engaged with the period's broader literary trend of exalting tenderness and compassion, which sought to educate the reader's heart by presenting characters with a profound susceptibility to emotional experience. While the work was considered innovative and risky in its form, its thematic foundation relies on the same principles of sympathy and emotional intensity that defined the "novel of sensibility" during that time.12