Author: Godwin, Catherine Grace
Biography:
GODWIN, Catherine Grace, formerly GARNETT (1798-1845: ancestry.co.uk)
Although "Catharine" on some of her title-pages, she is Catherine in all official records. She was born on 25 Dec. 1798 in Glasgow, the younger daughter of Thomas Garnett MD (1766-1802) and his wife Catherine Grace Cleveland (c.1770-1798). Her mother died in childbirth. Her father’s fortunes declined professionally and financially and he eventually applied to the RLF for assistance. On his death in May 1802, an attempt was made to raise a subscription for the orphans but in the end a friend of her mother’s, Mary Warboys of Barbon, near Kirby Lonsdale, Westmoreland, brought up Catherine and her sister Louisa, was later a witness at her wedding, and in old age lived with her at Burnside Cottage, Barbon. She married Thomas Godwin (c. 1782-1852), a surgeon, at New Church, St. Pancras, on 11 August 1824. He worked several times as a doctor in the East India Company and may have been introduced to her by Lt. Henry Philip Lovelace, an officer in the 16th Lancers who had married her sister Louisa Cleveland on 8 April 1823 at St. John’s Calcutta. Prior to her marriage, Catherine Grace had contributed to the Lonsdale Magazine (a memoir of her father) and published The Night before the Bridal (1824) which was well received. She dedicated her next volume, The Wanderer’s Legacy (1829), to Wordsworth (q.v.) who responded with a significant letter on the Spenserian stanza. She also contributed to the Annuals. Her final volume The Reproving Angel: A Vision (1835) was a darker performance perhaps influenced by the death of her sister on 15 Aug. 1832 in Pistoia, Tuscany: she died after her dress caught fire and is buried in the Swiss/English Protestant Cemetery in Florence. Other prose works consisting mostly of moralistic tales for younger readers add little to her reputation: Basil Harlow (1836), Cousin Kate (1836), Alicia Grey (1837), Louisa Seymour (1837), Josephine (1837). A final work, hitherto unattributed in library catalogues, was listed in a death notice: Hints towards the Formation of Character, with Reference Chiefly to Social Duties. By a Plain-Spoken Englishwoman (1843). She undertook a tour of Germany and Switzerland in 1844 in an attempt to improve her health and with a view to publication wrote a series of letters to Mary Warboys. The letters remained unpublished, her health deteriorated further, and she died on 5 May 1845, leaving provision for Mary Warboys via her husband. A young relative on her mother’s side, Arthur Cleveland Wigan (1815-1901), edited her works in 1854 and supplied a detailed memoir. (The Poetical Works . . . with a Memoir, ed. A. C. Wigan [1854]; Boyle 103-104; Wordsworth, Collected Letters [1979] 5:57-9; ancestry.co.uk 28 Sept. 2020; "Garnett, Thomas," ODNB 28 Sept. 2020; GM July 1802, 690, Aug. 1802, 677-678; Morning Post 20 Aug. 1824; Atlas 2 Sept. 1832; Preston Chronicle 10 May 1845) AA
Other Names:
- Catharine Grace Garnett
- Catharine Grace Godwin