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Author: Hill, Isabel

Biography:

Hill, Isabel (1800-42: ODNB)

Dramatist, novelist, translator. She was born at Bristol to William Hill and Isabel (Savage) Hill. She was encouraged from childhood to write by her mother (who herself wrote poetry) and an older brother, Benson Earle Hill (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, these included a one-volume novel, Constance (1822—not 1823 as sometimes stated). These and Zaphna were well-reviewed but Hill felt frustrated by the difficulties in securing a reliable income from her writing. (Her introduction, “An indefinite article,” to Holiday Dreams reflects on this and the challenges of female authorship generally.) She 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. She died at London where she and Benson had lived since 1827. (ODNB 26 Feb. 2019)

 

Books written (4):

2nd edn. 1821
London: W. Sams, 1823
London/ Edinburgh: Thomas Cadell/ W. Blackwood, 1829