Author: GROVER, Harriet
Biography:
GROVER, Harriet, formerly DICKINSON (1786-1865: ancestry.co.uk)
She was baptised on 14 Nov. 1786 at St. Mary’s Lambeth, now south London, the fifth of ten children of of Captain Thomas Dickinson (1754-1828), superintendant of the Ordnances at Woolwich, and Frances de Brissac (1760-1854), who had married at Christ Church, Spitalfields, in 1781. Her mother was the daughter of a master silk weaver of Huguenot descent with printing and publishing interests. One of her brothers, Sebastien, died in the Peninsula War at Badajos in 1811; another, Thomas, later rose to the rank of Major General in the Army. Her younger sister, Anne (1791-1883), married the clergyman, schoolmaster, and poet, Arthur Benoni Evans. Harriet married Rev. John Septimus Grover (1766-1853) on 28 Aug. 1811 at Plumstead, Kent. There was no issue. He had been educated at Eton and King’s College Cambridge and returned to Eton as a master, fellow, and later vice-provost (1835-51). In 1817 Eton also presented to him to the living of Farnham Royal, Buckinghamshire, worth £700 per annum. She wrote The Emigrants (1835) for her nieces Fanny and Eliza Dickinson. The British Library attributes the work to Harriott Anabella Goodall but this is incorrect. The work was printed at Eton and the dedication was signed “H. G.,” clearly pointing to Harriet Grover. Further, the Ashmolean copy in Oxford is inscribed “H. Grover, Eton College” and presented to “Emily Grover, with kind love from the writer.” Her husband died on 28 Nov. 1853 in London. She died on 2 Mar. 1865 at the house in Kensington, London, of her widowed sister Anne Evans, leaving an estate of around £3000. (ancestry.co.uk 11 Aug. 2023; CCEd 11 Aug. 2023; LES 30 Nov. 1853; Reading Mercury 11 Mar. 1865; Personal Papers of Sir John Evans [nephew], Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) AA