Author: Atkinson, Sarah
Biography:
ATKINSON, Sarah (fl 1812-31)
There are only a few tantalising clues to this author’s identity. Her Verses for Little Children was published as written by “a young lady for the amusement of her junior brothers and sisters.” Darton and Harvey also published verse for children by Jane Taylor (q.v.) and they may have wished to create an impression that this was one of her books. PML identifies the 1813 edition of Verses as by Taylor but nowhere else is it claimed for her. Atkinson’s Botanical Multiplication Table includes illustrations, likely by her, and an 1830s herbarium by Sarah Atkinson was held by the Bristol Museum; it was lost during bombing in 1940. Atkinson’s poems later poems are on religious topics and she may have been a Dissenter. The preface to Poems for Youth is signed from Ball’s Pond, Islington, where there was a dissenting chapel. Possibly she was the Sarah Atkinson who was born to Thomas and Mary Atkinson in Islington on 29 Sept. 1790. (ancestry.co.uk 29 Aug. 2022; Ray Desmond, Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists [1994]) SR