Author: COLLINS, Miss
Biography:
COLLINS, Miss (fl 1816)
The only known publication of “Miss Collins” appeared by subscription in 1816 and seems not to have been reviewed. The contents and subscription list would undoubtedly provide some clues as to the identity of the author and her motives for going into print, but in their absence all that can be said is that there is a possibility that she was Jemima Jane Collins (1797-1827), the only child of Jemima (Colman) and Major John Raw Collins of Hatch Court, Somerset, who was born on 20 Nov. 1797 and baptised at Bath, Somerset, on 20 Feb. 1799. Her father died in 1807. A correspondence that appears to be authentic, published in GM after all the principals were dead, revealed that she had become secretly engaged to Benjamin Rotch, the son of a merchant, in London in 1816; when the family found out in 1818, the engagement was broken off and on 14 Jan. 1819 she married Robert Harvey of Langley Park, Buckinghamshire (1791-1863), and bore two children before her death on 27 Aug. 1827. She was buried at Langley on 4 Sept. The love letters do contain verse, but that was conventional and does not confirm her identity as an author. (ancestry.com 19 Dec. 2024; findmypast.com 20 Dec. 2024; “Old Loves and Old Letters,” GM 233 [1872], 212-35, 285-300, 394-400; The News [London] 3 Sept. 1827) HJ