Author: King, Harriet Rebecca
Biography:
KING, Harriet Rebecca (1800-81: ancestry.co.uk)
She was born on 13 June 1800 at Bullington, Hampshire, the third of six daughters of Henry King and his wife Ann Courtney. In 1821 her father was forced to transfer all his assets to satisfy creditors and moved to Dorset. Poems (1823), with over 500 subscribers, makes no mention of his troubles but was probably her attempt to improve the family finances. It also contains a poem on her baby sister Emily, who died in her arms on 16 Apr. 1818. She called the volume “the offspring of that solitude of mind” as a result of her “nervous deafness.” The family moved to London where the four surviving sisters Ann Courtney (1796-1879), Rebecca Harriet, Anna Maria (1804-1880), and Caroline (1810-1875), ran a school, first at Elysium Row and then the Fulham House Seminary (now 87 Fulham High Street, SW6) for the rest of their lives. She continued to write increasingly devotional poetry in Metrical Exercises (1834) and Thoughts in Verse (2 vols. 1842-1846) and produced short tales for her pupils, Oakdale Cottage (1829) and Nuneham Park (1831). She died on 19 Dec. 1881 at 5 Church Row, Fulham, where the sisters had all lived. (Her sister Anna Maria, who died the previous year, had left her an estate of under £400.) All three sisters (who also never married) predeceased her and were buried at All Saints, Fulham, with a Memorial giving their dates followed by biblical quotation. (ancestry.co.uk 15 Aug. 2020; findmypast.co.uk 15 Aug. 2020; Hampshire Chronicle 10 Dec. 1821, 2 Dec. 1833, 24 Dec. 1881; Salisbury and Winchester Journal 12 July 1830, 10 Sept. 1832, 12 July 1841, 24 Dec. 1842; London Evening Standard 23 Dec. 1881; All Saints, Fulham, Memorial G24) AA