Author: Collier, Mary
Biography:
COLLIER, Mary, formerly PEACH (1799-1858: ancestry.co.uk)
She was baptised on 12 May 1799 at Matlock, Derbyshire, the daughter of James Peach, a stonemason, and his wife Rebecca Wright, who had married on 19 Aug. 1798. She married John Collier, also a stonemason, on 21 Apr. 1823 at Duffield, Derbyshire. She was a housemaid. They initially lived at High Wood, near Belper, and baptised their first two children at Belper and Heage Congregational (Independent) Chapel. By about 1827 they had moved to Derby and were living on the Ashbourne road. They must have moved closer to Methodism as they baptised their later children in King Street Wesleyan, Derby. In all they had at least eight children. In her 1835 Prefaceshe mentions seven children, four of whom had died. Her Poetic Effusions (1823) went through three further editions (1835, 1847, 1851), each containing additional poems, the last two including a portrait. All volumes were well subscribed and sold well. She appears to have gone door to door soliciting subscriptions in the absence of the usual family networks: "On Visiting Matlock to procure Subscribers, 1847" and the large local list of Warwickshire rather than Derbyshire subscribers for her Leamington 1851 volume seem to suggest this. Although never part of literary society, she had access to a literary network of sorts, with the poets Beebe Eyre and Lewis Mansel Thornton aware of her work. She died of heart disease on 31 Dec. 1858, aged 58, at Parliament Street, Derby, with her husband’s occupation given as Cellarman. She was buried on 4 Jan. 1859 at Nottingham Road Cemetery (Grave 17623). Beebe Eyre wrote a memorial poem on her death and included her Sonnet "Matlock" in his Miscellaneous Poems (1866), 120-21. (ancestry.co.uk 28 Jul. 2021; findmypast.co.uk 28 Jul. 2021; Derby Mercury 9 Apr. 1823; Derbyshire Family History Society; Kevin Binfield, "Life Study in and Beyond Mary Peach Collier’s Poetic Effusions," Teaching Labouring-Class British Literature of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries [2019], 227-38) AA
Other Names:
- Mary Peach