Author: Dixon, Sophie
Biography:
DIXON, Sophie (1799-1855: findmypast.co.uk)
She was born on 10 Mar. 1799 at Plymouth, the eldest daughter of John Dixon, a slate merchant, chapman and dealer, and his wife Mary Noel. He was declared bankrupt in 1819 but the firm’s fortunes revived under his sons, possibly due in part to the expansion in school education and the need for school slates. He died, aged 70, in 1828. Sophie Dixon had four sisters who never married and remained at home: Emma (1804-1855), Lucy (1805-1876), Cora (1807-1876), and Mary (1809-1881). Mary (Noel) Dixon and her daughters continued to live at Hillside Cottage, Plymstock. She died there of heart disease, aged 80, on 14 Dec. 1840. Emma, her second daughter, died three days later. Sophie died on 27 Dec. “of fever, brought on by severe domestic affliction,” aged 56. Two surviving sisters, Cora and Lucy, died in April and May 1876 from bronchitis. The last sister, Mary, went to live with her brothers in Bangor and died in 1881. After the publication of Castalian Hours (1829), Sophie Dixon wrote two prose accounts of excursions in Dartmoor. She also contributed a number of poems to a rare journal, The Philo-Danmonian (1830) and to the South Devon Monthly Museum. In 1844, further poems appeared in newspapers. A posthumous publication, the long poem Lovel; a Tale of the Olden Time (1858), is rare, with a North American copy in Kohler and a British copy at the Devon and Exeter Institution. Two further works, Sacred Garland (1835) and Florry and her Friends (1841), listed by Kearley Wright, were either incorrectly described or have not survived. Poems for Young Children was widely advertised in 1834 but no copy has ever been located. (findmypast.co.uk 5 Aug. 2020; W. H. Kearley Wright, West-Country Poets [1896], 150-1; London Courier 22 Sept. 1834; Exeter Flying Post 5 and 12 Sept. 1844; Bradford Observer 30 May and 24 Oct. 1844; Western Times 22 Dec. 1855;Exeter and Plymouth Gazette 5 Jan. 1856; St. Petroc, Harford, Memorial Tablet; Darton G772) AA