Author: Hill, Isabel
Biography:
HILL, Isabel (1800-42: ODNB)
Dramatist, novelist, and translator. She was born at Bristol to William Hill and Isabel (Savage) Hill and baptised on 26 Sept. 1800 at the church of St. Michael the Archangel in Bristol. She was encouraged from childhood to write by her mother (who herself wrote poetry) and an older brother, Benson Earle Hill (1790-1845: a soldier and, later, writer and actor), with whom she lived throughout her adult life. She began contributing prose and verse to periodicals and her first book-length works were issued by John Warren, an upscale London publisher. In addition to The Poet’s Child which went to two editions, these included a one-volume novel, Constance (1822—not 1823 as sometimes stated). These works and Zaphna were well-reviewed but Hill felt frustrated by the difficulties in securing a reliable income from her writing. Holiday Dreams, dedicated to her brother, includes an essay, "An Indefinite Article" which reflects on this and the challenges of female authorship generally. (Many of the prose pieces in Holiday Dreams had previously been published in periodicals; Hill notes that they were revised for inclusion in her book.) Hill turned to translation: her edition of Madame de Staël’s Corinne (1831) remained in print until the 1880s, and she also translated several works by Chateaubriand. Another novel, Brother Tragedians, and a farce, My Own Twin Brother, appeared in 1834 and her 5-act verse tragedy, Brian, the Probationer, in 1842. At the time of her death from the tuberculosis that had troubled her since childhood, Hill was writing a work on female education. At the time of her death she was living in Montpelier Row, Brompton, with Benson and his family. She died there and was buried in the Brompton cemetery on 10 Jan. 1842. (ODNB 26 Feb. 2019; ancestry.co.uk 26 Feb. 2019; findmypast.co.uk 23 Mar. 2025) SR