Author: Campbell, Dorothy Primrose
Biography:
CAMPBELL, Dorothy Primrose (1793-1863: ancestry.co.uk)
She was born on 4 May 1793 (baptised 11 May) at Lerwick, Shetland, to Duncan Campbell and Eliza (Scott) Campbell. Her parents had married at Lerwick on 19 Aug. 1788. Letters she wrote to Walter Scott, q.v., (to whom she may have been distantly related) in 1817-21 establish that her family was impoverished particularly after the early death of her father and depict her as struggling to keep the family together. She published poems under the name “Ora” in the Ladies Monthly Museum. The 1816 subscription edition of her Poems includes a list of 160 subscribers and the author’s preface states that she was motivated to publish by the financial distresses of her family. For her 1821 novel, Harley Radington, the publisher, A.K. Newman, paid her only in copies of the book. The 1841 census lists her as a governess working in the family of Richard Smith, a "Russia Broker," in Hackney, but she was unemployed by the time of her 1844 application to the Royal Literary Fund (one of her referees was Francis Jeffrey [q.v.]). She was awarded £30, and she was later supported by the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution. The 1851 Census shows her living at Quatre Bras, Hexham, Northumberland, with the support of the Institution. However by 1861 she had returned to London where she lived at an asylum for aged governesses in Saint Pancras. She died at London and was buried in the Saint James's cemetery in Saint Pancras on 10 Jan. 1863; the record gives her age as 66. (ancestry.co.uk 21 Aug 2018; Blain; RLF file 1093, NCCO; NLS correspondence with Walter Scott) SR
Other Names:
- D. P. Campbell
- Miss D. P. Campbell