Author: Adcock, Anna
Biography:
ADCOCK, Anna (1783-1857: findmypast.co.uk)
She was baptised Anne Adcock, daughter of William Adcock and his wife Anne Pick, of Street Hill and Loseby [Lowesby] Lodge, on 17 Jul. 1783 at All Saints, Lowesby. An elder brother, Robert, had been baptised on 6 Jan. 1781. Her poem "Lines to a Friend on Leaving Street-Hill" states that her father “tilled the land there.” At some point before the publication of her Cottage Poems (1808) she moved to Oakham, Rutland, and was known to John Clare (q.v.) who later thought her poems “very middling” but had earlier addressed a poem to her, "To Mrs Anna Adcock." She may also have lived in Wales. Cottage Poems was published by subscription for the benefit of her creditors. It contained mostly poems on rural subjects (flowers, seasons, sunset, storms, etc.) but she also records her misfortune and deception in love and the fates of deceived women By the time she published Ashby Woulds (1813) she must have become quite well known and had many more subscribers including several MPs and members of the aristocracy. In 1812-1813 she was running a school in Oakham, Rutland. She is recorded in the Censuses of 1841 and 1851 for Oakham as a schoolmistress at Market Place with an Elizabeth May listed as her assistant, then companion. She died, aged 73, of heart disease, on 4 Nov. 1857 at Garden Court, Oakham. (findmypast.co.uk 21 Aug. 2020; Stamford Mercury 3 Jul. 1812; Leicester Journal 30 Jul. 1813, 11 Dec. 1857; John Clare by Himself [1996] xv; John Clare, Letters [1985] 333; John Clare, Early Poems [1989] 1: 34-5) AA
Other Names:
- A. [Anna] Adcock