Author: Lloyd, Mary
Biography:
LLOYD, Mary (1772-1829: findmypast.com)
Brighton. A Poem was the first and apparently the last publication of the author, Mary Lloyd, and it is interesting from a number of points of view. It was an early loco-descriptive account of the town, the first by a woman. Besides the title poem, it contains many shorter poems, including some songs in Scottish dialect. Although Lloyd declares it to be her “first attempt” and regrets not having had a “literary friend” on hand to correct her MS, she had evidently been composing verses for some time. Reviews were encouraging though condescending. The 12-page subscription list is headed by the Duke of Clarence and contains the kind of Society names that might be expected to take an interest in a fashionable resort, as well as a high proportion of army officers. She was almost certainly the unmarried Mrs. Mary Lloyd, “of New Bond-street, late of the Grande Parade, Brighton,” who died in London, aged 57, on 14 May 1829, and was buried at St. George’s, Hanover Square, on 21 May. Born on 10 May 1772, the daughter of John and Ann (Cranage) Lloyd, she had been baptised in the same church on 7 June that year. Her parents were married there on 24 Jan. 1763. (findmypast.com 24 Jan. 2024; MR 60 [1809], 101-3; Morning Post 28 May 1829; Register Book of Marriages . . . St. George, Hanover Square [1886], 117) HJ