Della-Cruscans

Della-Cruscans [from the Accademia della Crusca, founded for linguistic purity, Florence, 16th cent.], a group of English poets living in Italy at the end of the 18th cent. who published pretentious, sentimental verse in The Arno (1784) and The Florence Miscellany (1785). Robert Merry, writing as "Della Crusca," Bertie Greatheed, William Parsons, and Mrs. Piozzi, under other names, were the contributors. In England their poetry and that of their followers, including Hannah Cowley, was published in the World and collected in the British Album (1789-91). Their verses were ridiculed by William Gifford.

Della Cruscans, a band of poets, led by Robert Merry (1755–98), who produced affected, sentimental, and highly ornamented verse towards the end of the 18th cent. Merry lived in Florence from 1784 to 1787 as a member of the Della Crusca academy. With Mrs Piozzi (see Thrale) and others he produced in 1785 a Miscellany in which he signed his work ‘Della Crusca’. ‘Anna Matilda’ ( H. Cowley) was another copious writer of the school who contributed with Merry and others to the British Album in 1790, a volume which proved very successful until the publication in 1791 of Gifford's The Baviad, a savage satire on the Della Cruscans.