Author: Harvey, Margaret
Biography:
HARVEY, Margaret (1768-1858: ODNB)
Since they both lived in or about Newcastle-upon-Tyne at the same time, biographical sources speculate that she and Jane Harvey (q.v.) may have been related to one another, but no firm link has been established. Margaret’s Newcastle roots were on her mother’s side of the family. She was the eldest of three daughters of John Harvey, a surgeon with a practice in Sunderland, Durham County, and Margaret Ildeston, who had married at the bride’s parish of St. Andrew, Newcastle, on 18 Nov. 1766. The three girls for unknown reasons lived with their aunt, Ann Ildeston, in Newcastle until about 1812, when she died and they moved together to another house where Margaret Harvey wrote her first long poem, published by subscription in 1814. Correspondents in N&Q refer also to a “Monody on the Death of . . . Princess Charlotte” published in 1818 but no independent publication of that title has been found attributed to her; it might have appeared in a newspaper. About this time she left her sisters and moved to Bishopswearmouth, Durham. Her melodrama Raymond de Percy was performed at Sunderland in 1822. Reports of her later years are confused: she may have lived for a time with her sisters, and it might have been in Sunderland. In 1872 “J. B. P.,” who seems to have known her and describes her as “a strong-minded woman,” stated categorically that she was living in Sunderland in 1842. But it was in Bishopswearmouth that she helped to run a school for young ladies and there she died, on 18 June 1858. (ODNB 20 Feb. 2022; N&Q ns 4, 10 [1872] 460; Orlando 20 Feb. 2022; findmypast.com 20 Feb 2022; ancestry.com 20 Feb. 2022)