Author: Heron, Mary
Biography:
HERON, Mary (c. 1766-1844?: ancestry.com)
“Mary Heron, of Durham” had two volumes of her poetry printed at Newcastle in 1786 and a third in 1792, likewise a novel, The Conflict, in 1790, which was reprinted in London in 1793 and dismissively reviewed. “Mrs. Heron” and “Mary Heron” published respectively in London a novel in three volumes, Conversation: or, Shades of Difference (1821) and a long poem about indigenous North Americans, The Mandan Chief, which is of uncertain date but definitely later than 1841 and commonly assigned to 1845. Blain notes that the latter poem was by “presumably a different MH” and writes admiringly about it: she not unreasonably assumes that the author of the earlier works would be too old, that there was too long a gap in production, and that the contrast in quality of the earlier and later work can be accounted for only by their having different authors. ODNB has an entry for the author of the eighteenth-century titles and does not mention any later works. The quality of the early poems is not negligible, however, but demonstrates literary and political sophistication. Modern genealogical websites suggest, furthermore, that the same woman could have been the author of all these works. In the 1841 Census a Mary Heron, of “Independent Means,” who gave her age as 75 and her birthplace as Durham, is listed as resident on South St. in Durham at the same address as Ann Stanley, 40, also of independent means, who might have been a relation or companion. That woman died on South St. on 15 May 1844, unmarried, aged 80 (death certificate). A “Miss Mary Heron”—“Mrs.” would have been a courtesy title—died at Felton, not far from Newcastle, on 3 Aug. 1844, aged 79 and “much respected” (Newcastle Courier). No other public records have been found either to confirm or disprove this conjecture, and Blain might well be right. At least four Mary Herons were baptised in the county of Durham between 1765 and 1768. (ancestry.com 17 May 2022; Blain; EN1, EN2; ODNB 17 May 2022; findmypast.com 17 May 2022; Newcastle Courant 9 Aug. 1844; contributions by AA)