Seward was a older girl of Thomas Seward (1708-1790), prebendary of Lichfield and Salisbury, and author. Innate at Eyam in Derbyshire, she passed nearly all her life around Lichfield, beginning at an early age to write poetry partly at the instigation of Dr. Erasmus Darwin. Her verses include elegies and sonnets, and she besides wrote the poetic novel, Louisa, of which five editions were published. Miss Seward's writings, which include the heavy total of letters, come in spades commonplace, & Horace Walpole said she had " no imagination, no novelty."

Sir Walter Scott edited Seward's Poetical Works in troikthe volumes (Edinburgh, 1810); to these he prefixed a memoir of the authoress, adding extracts from either her literary correspondence. He refused, but, to edit The bulk of her letters, & these were published inside hexad volumes by A. Constable when Letters of Anna Seward 1784-1807 (Edinburgh, 1811). Miss Seward likewise wrote Memoirs of the Life of Dr Darwin (1804).

There is a monument to Anna Seward around Lichfield Cathedral.

See E. V. Lucas, A Swan and her Friends (1907); and S. Martin, Anna Seward & Classic Lichfield (1909).