Author: Harwood, Charlotte
Biography:
HARWOOD, Charlotte (c. 1763-1853: ancestry.com)
Charlotte Harwood came of distinguished dissenting stock; her mother Sarah (d 1791) was the daughter of Samuel Chandler (1693-1766) and her father Edward Harwood (1729-1794) was an eminent biblical scholar and Presbyterian minister. At the time when she published her Lucubrations (1786) as by “a lady,” the Harwoods were living in London and were in dire straits. Edward Harwood had suffered a stroke in 1782 (for which he received electrical treatment, with little success); between 1790 and 1793 the RLF granted 25 guineas and a few weeks of emergency funding at 10/6 a week. After the deaths of their parents, Charlotte must have lived at Castle Hedingham, Essex, with her unmarried eldest brother, the naval surgeon and numismatist Edward Harwood (1758/9-1814), perhaps keeping house for him. When he moved to London she stayed on and is recorded as living there alone or with a single servant in the 1841 and 1851 Census. She died at Castle Hedingham and was buried on 9 Feb. 1853 at the church of St. Nicholas. Her only book is included in Watkins (1816) as one of the works of living authors of Great Britain. (ancestry.com 22 Feb. 2022; ODNB 22 Feb. 2022, both father and son Edward Harwood; “Harwood, Edward,” BL Dept. of MSS)