Author: Fanshawe, Catherine Maria
Biography:
FANSHAWE, Catherine Maria (1765-1834: ODNB)
Fanshawe never published a collection of her own; the few titles that appeared in her lifetime were issued anonymously, including "An Aenigma" which was taken for Byron's and Speech of the Member for Odium (3 pages, 1833), a satire on Cobbett (qq.v.). She bequeathed her manuscripts to her friend the Rev. William Harness, who included most of the poems in a volume of Memorials of Miss Catherine Maria Fanshawe printed for private circulation in 1865; they were then published by Pickering after the death of Harness, with his notes, as Literary Remains of Catherine Maria Fanshawe (1876). Posthumous recognition, beginning at that point, grew in the late twentieth century with the widening interest in neglected women writers. She was born into high society, one of the five children of Penelope (Dredge) and John Fanshawe (1738-1816) of Shabden in Chipstead, Surrey. Her father held a position in the household of George III. Two brothers died young. After the death of their father, when the family estate was sold, the three remaining sisters lived together at Midhurst House in Richmond, Surrey, and at their town house on Berkeley Square in London. Catherine Maria alone of the three accomplished sisters wrote verses which circulated among their friends--who included Walter Scott and Mary Russell Mitford (qq.v.). She was physically frail and died on 17 Apr. 1834 at Putney Heath after a long illness, predeceased by one of her sisters. The last surviving sister died in 1856, all of them being buried along with their parents and brothers in the churchyard of St. Margaret's, Chipstead. (ODNB 4 Jul. 2021; findmypast.com 4 Jul. 2021; Morning Post 21 Apr. 1834; gravestonephotos.com 4 Jul. 2012) HJ