Author: Hedge, Mary Ann
Biography:
HEDGE, Mary Ann (1776-1841: ancestry.co.uk)
She was born on 23 Nov. 1776 at Colchester, the youngest child and only daughter of Nathaniel Hedge (1735-1821), a jeweller and goldsmith, and his wife Martha Gibson, a milliner. By 1811, all seven of her brothers had died. Her mother died in 1816 and her father in 1821. Although he left an estate including property to her, legal complications reduced her inheritance and she struggled thereafter. Her uncle died in 1814 and three of his children died in 1816. (She edited the juvenile poetry of her nephew Henry Thomas Hedge [q.v.], the son of her brother Thomas, as Memorials of Early Promise, 1817.) She was left the sole survivor of her family and in 1827 was forced to apply to the RLF for assistance. Joanna Baillie, who knew her but slightly, supported her application. She died on 23 Jan. 1841, aged 64, in Colchester. She produced various domestic tales for children, historical summaries and compilations of British history, and exotic tales such as The Koromantyn Slaves (1823), Samboe; or, The African Boy (1823), Radama; or, The Enlightened African (1824), and Alexis Himkof (1827). Eleven works by her are as yet unattributed in the British Library catalogue. (ancestry.co.uk 4 Aug. 2020; Ipswich Journal 4 May 1765; Bernard Mason, Clock and Watchmaking in Colchester [1969]; RLF 1/593; Colchester Gazette 11 May 1816; Judith Bailey Slagle, ed., The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie [1999] 1: 218-20, 473-5, 2: 804-6; Lawrence Darton, The Dartons [2004]; GRO; Chelmsford Chronicle 5 Feb. 1841) AA
Other Names:
- Mary Anne Hedge