Harriet Downing
Harriet Downing | |
|---|---|
 portrait by Rembrandt Peale | |
| Born | 1778  London |
| Baptised | 12 August 1778 |
| Died | 18 March 1845 (aged 66–67) Chipping Norton |
| Occupation | Writer, poet |
Harriet Bourne Downing Oliver (1778 – 18 March 1845) was a British poet and novelist.
Life
[edit]Harriet Bourne was baptized at All Hallows' Church, Tottenham on 12 August 1778. She was the daughter of John Bourne and Frances Shuttleworth. In 1803 she married George William Downing, a vintner who wrote stage comedies and pamphlets on parliamentary reform. They had five children.[1]
George Downing died around 1820 on a trip to the Cape of Good Hope. In 1829, she married her second husband, Charles Martin Oliver, a merchant.[1]
Rembrandt Peale painted her portrait, dating it "London 1834".[2] John Quincy Adams recorded seeing the portrait in his diary, in Washington, DC in December 1833.[3]
Harriet Downing died of a stroke on 18 March 1845 in Chipping Norton.[1]
Writing
[edit]Downing published all of her works under the name Harriet Downing, including after her second marriage. She published two books of poetry by subscription, Mary; or, Female Friendship (1816) and The Child of the Tempest (1821).[1] The former tells the story of an orphan, Mary, while the latter is a collection of romantic poetry.[4]
Two dramatic poems followed: The Bride of Sicily (1830) and Satan In Love (1840). The heroine of each converts a Moor and Satan, respectively.[4]
In 1836 she began publishing her series of prose vignettes, Remembrances of a Monthly Nurse, in Fraser's Magazine. The narrator, a widow from a respectable family, works as a monthly nurse and travels from family to family, frankly discussing issues like social class, murder, and suicide. They were collected posthumously in book form in 1852.[4]
She published a children's book, How Fanny Teachers Her Children, and Odds and Ends (1836).[4][5] She also contributed to publications including Forget-Me-Not and Bentley's Miscellany.[1][4]
Bibliography
[edit]- Mary; or, Female Friendship: A Poem, in Twelve Books London: for the author by James Harper, J. M. Richardson, T. and J. Allman, 1816[1]
- The Child of the Tempest; and Other Poems London: J. Harwood, 1821[1]
- The Bride of Sicily, a Dramatic Poem London: Hurst, Chance, and Co., and John Sams, 1830[1]
- How Fanny Teachers Her Children, and Odds and Ends, 1836[5]
- Satan In Love: A Dramatic Poem London, 1840[6]
- Remembrances of a Monthly Nurse, 1852.[5]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g h Ashfield, Andrew. "Downing, Harriet". Jackson Bibliography of Romantic Poetry. Retrieved 2023-08-02.
- ^ "Mrs. Oliver". Frick Art Reference Library. Retrieved 2023-08-01.
- ^ "12 December 1833". John Quincy Adams Digital Diary.
- ^ a b c d e The Feminist companion to Literature in English : women writers from the Middle Ages to the present. London: Batsford. 1990. p. 306. ISBN 978-0-7134-5848-0.
- ^ a b c The Cambridge bibliography of English literature. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press. 1999. ISBN 978-0-521-39100-9.
- ^ Davis, Gwenn (1992). Drama by women to 1900 : a bibliography of American and British writers. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-2797-9.
External links
[edit]- Three Notches From the Devil’s Tail; or, The Man in the Spanish Cloak from Bentley's Miscellany at the Victorian Short Fiction Project
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