Author: Hill, Elizabeth
Biography:
HILL, Elizabeth (fl 1796-1822)
Most of the reliable information about her has to be inferred from her only known works, the two anthologies published in several editions under the titles of The Poetical Monitor and The Sequel to the Poetical Monitor. She was the editor but also one of the contributors of original verse; among the others were Hannah More and Anna Laetitia Barbauld (qq.v.). The Monitor was published for the benefit and created for the use of a special girls’ school, the Female Charity School that had been formed in 1792 to complement the Shakespeare’s Walk Protestant Dissenters’ School for Boys (1712-1875). Established to provide clothing and education for forty girls, it was run by a committee of women and funded initially by donations and subscriptions; the Monitor was dedicated to the “Patronesses.” Bequests from Hill and a Mrs. Sermon eventually put the school on the more secure footing of an endowment. Hill appears to have been unmarried although she is referred to in one public report as “Mrs.” (a common courtesy title for older women). She must have been well to do and was presumably a Dissenter—which might account for the absence of the usual records of birth, baptism, and death. The wills of several Elizabeth Hills resident in and around London do not show any match for her philanthropic bequest. She may have been the “Miss Elizabeth Hill” who subscribed to a new society for the education of the poor in Witley, Oxfordshire, in 1813. She signed the editor’s “Advertisement” in the 1822 edition of the Monitor but the next one available, that of 1831, announces and laments her death. (Parliamentary Papers 72 [1895], 563; OUCH 22 May 1813; Pigot’s Metropolitan Guide [1824] 151; MR 12 [1794], 468)