Author: Kilner, Dorothy
Biography:
KILNER, Dorothy (1755-1836: ODNB), pseudonyms M. P., M. Pelham, Mary Pelham
The youngest of five children of Frances (Ayscough) and Thomas Kilner, she was born in Essex, probably at Woodford, but spent most of her life at Maryland Point (now part of London) after the family moved there in 1759. (When she started to publish, she chose M. P. as her first pseudonym.) Her closest childhood friend was Mary Ann Maze, with whom she invented stories and wrote verses; in 1774 Dorothy's friend married her brother and became Mary Ann Kilner (q.v.). Dorothy Kilner chose not to marry and became a devoted aunt and a prolific children's writer in the 1780s, publishing anonymously or under a pseudonym as was usual in that genre. Most of the titles associated with her are didactic moral guides, conduct literature, or instructive fiction, the most successful from a historic point of view being The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse (1783), and commercially Dialogues and Letters on Morality, Oeconomy, and Politeness: for . . . Young Female Minds (1783?). Mary Ann's daughter Frances (b 1783) nursed Dorothy in her final years, after the death of her mother. She is buried at All Saints church, West Ham. (ODNB 29 May 2021; OCCL; ancestry.com 29 May 2021; findmypast.com 29 May 2021; WorldCat)
Other Names:
- M. Pelham