Author: Hennett, Mrs.
Biography:
HENNETT, Mrs. (fl 1820)
“Mrs. Hennett,” fairly well known in the East Midlands of England to judge by the subscription list and contents of her one known publication, is now difficult to identify with any confidence. Her subscribers came mainly from Lincolnshire and East Yorkshire (Lincoln, Louth, Spilsby, Boston, Alford, Grimsby, Hull); one of her poems was inspired by an article in a Leeds newspaper; and she cites a local child poet who attended a school at Louth. Public records that might reveal more about her identity are complicated by errors of transcription, the unusual surname “Hennett” sometimes turning out to have been originally Bennett or Stennett. She was evidently not only well known but well read: she refers knowledgeably to major English authors and also singles out contemporary women writers such as Burney, Opie, Robinson, Porter, and (Jane) West. She appears to have been a teacher. The most likely match is Elizabeth Poyntell of Sleaford, near Lincoln, who married Nicholas Hennett of Welby at Sleaford in 1789 and was buried at Sleaford in 1835, but it is far from certain. (ancestry.com 27 Apr. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 27 Apr. 2022; Patrick Scott, “The Market(place) and the Muse: Tennyson, Lincolnshire, and the Nineteenth-century Idea of the Book,” Victorian Newsletter 117 [2010]; contributions by AA) HJ