Anna Maria Mackenzie | |
---|---|
Born | Anna Maria Wight |
Pen name | Ellen of Exeter |
Occupation | Author |
Language | English |
Nationality | English |
Years active | 1783–1811 |
Notable work | Monmouth: A Tale, 1790 |
Spouse | Cox; Johnson; Mackenzie |
Literature portal |
Anna Maria Mackenzie ( fl. 1783–1811) was a prolific author of popular novels active during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She was closely associated with the Minerva Press.
Anna Maria Wight was the daughter of a coal merchant in Essex; little more is known of her early life or antecedents. She married a man named Cox who died and left her with four children and financially dependent on relatives. [1] She worked at a women's boarding school as an assistant, then turned to writing full time. [1] Judging by her publishing history, by 1789 she was remarried, to a man named Johnson, and by 1795 she was publishing as Mrs. Mackenzie, presumably the name of a third (and final) husband.
Anna Maria Mackenzie provides the bibliographer with a challenge, as she published anonymously, as well as under a pseudonym, and also under each of her three married names. This may be why many accounts of her career contain some variation of the phrase that she wrote "at least" sixteen novels: there are sixteen that are reasonably certain but she may have written more. There were also, apparently, newspaper pieces published early on. [1] It was as a novelist, however, that she built her career. Reviewers of her novels "were usually kind to her" [2] and her novels were routinely pirated. [3] [4] She published much of her work for William Lane, founder of the successful Minerva Press and proprietor of the Lane Circulating Library, and her own work was responsive to trends in popular taste. Her first major work, Burton Wood (1783), was a sentimental epistolary novel; many of her works contained Gothic and sensational elements; later she turned to historical fiction with Monmouth (1790); Danish Massacre (1791), set in early medieval times; and Mysteries Elucidated (1795), set in the fourteenth century. As one commentator has it, "her career exemplifies almost every trend of the period." [5]
Anna Maria Mackenzie | |
---|---|
Born | Anna Maria Wight |
Pen name | Ellen of Exeter |
Occupation | Author |
Language | English |
Nationality | English |
Years active | 1783–1811 |
Notable work | Monmouth: A Tale, 1790 |
Spouse | Cox; Johnson; Mackenzie |
Literature portal |
Anna Maria Mackenzie ( fl. 1783–1811) was a prolific author of popular novels active during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She was closely associated with the Minerva Press.
Anna Maria Wight was the daughter of a coal merchant in Essex; little more is known of her early life or antecedents. She married a man named Cox who died and left her with four children and financially dependent on relatives. [1] She worked at a women's boarding school as an assistant, then turned to writing full time. [1] Judging by her publishing history, by 1789 she was remarried, to a man named Johnson, and by 1795 she was publishing as Mrs. Mackenzie, presumably the name of a third (and final) husband.
Anna Maria Mackenzie provides the bibliographer with a challenge, as she published anonymously, as well as under a pseudonym, and also under each of her three married names. This may be why many accounts of her career contain some variation of the phrase that she wrote "at least" sixteen novels: there are sixteen that are reasonably certain but she may have written more. There were also, apparently, newspaper pieces published early on. [1] It was as a novelist, however, that she built her career. Reviewers of her novels "were usually kind to her" [2] and her novels were routinely pirated. [3] [4] She published much of her work for William Lane, founder of the successful Minerva Press and proprietor of the Lane Circulating Library, and her own work was responsive to trends in popular taste. Her first major work, Burton Wood (1783), was a sentimental epistolary novel; many of her works contained Gothic and sensational elements; later she turned to historical fiction with Monmouth (1790); Danish Massacre (1791), set in early medieval times; and Mysteries Elucidated (1795), set in the fourteenth century. As one commentator has it, "her career exemplifies almost every trend of the period." [5]