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Author: Hughes, Anne

Biography:

HUGHES, Anne (fl 1784-1816)

Hughes was her married name; of her origins nothing has been discovered. The terminal floruit date reflects her record in Watkins’s Living Authors, but not all of Watkins’s authors were in fact still alive at the time of publication and she could be one of the ones who were not. What he says, furthermore, is as follows: “Of this Lady nothing more is known than as the author of” Poems, Moral Dramas, and two novels, Caroline (1787) and Henry and Isabella (1788). (Baker says the same.) This list is itself interesting, since it corresponds to the works claimed by Hughes on her own title-pages but not to modern library catalogues, which sometimes attribute to her three other works, the novels Zoriada (1787) and Jemima (1795?) which do appear to be by the same author but probably not by Mrs. Hughes; and Anne Hughes’s Diary or The Diary of a Farmer’s Wife, 1796-1797, which was first published, allegedly from ms, in 1937, but which has no credible connection with our author. She is sometimes claimed among Welsh authors but again there is no clear biographical evidence to that effect. The Critical Review treated her poetical works with respect but reveals no more of her identity. Her first publication, the Poems of 1784, was dedicated by permission to the Viscountess of Hereford—perhaps the best proof available that the author lived in or near Herefordshire, which is a county in England but on the border with Wales. (Watkins; Blain; findmypast.com 28 Dec. 2022; EN1; D. Baker, Biographia Dramatica [1812], 379; CR 69 [1790], 500-2)

 

 

Other Names:

  • Mrs. [Anne] Hughes
 

Books written (2):

London: J. Dodsley, 1784