Author: Mathews, Elizabeth Kirkham
Biography:
MATHEWS, Elizabeth Kirkham, formerly STRONG (1772-1802: Orlando)
The daughter of George Strong (d 1796), a physician, and his wife Mary Kirkham, who had married at St. Thomas’s, Exeter, on 25 Mar. 1762, she was baptised at St. John’s, Exeter, on 5 Aug. 1772. The specifics of her schooling are not known, but when she met her future husband Charles Mathews (q.v.) she was teaching at a girls’ school in Swansea, Wales, and had already embarked on her short but productive career as a writer with occasional contributions to the Monthly Mirror. They married at St. Mary, Swansea, on 19 Sept. 1797. Some very early anonymous novels, such as Constance (1785) and its sequels Pharos, Argos, Memoirs of a Scots Heiress, and The Count de Hoensdern, have been incorrectly attributed to her. Her Poems, published by subscription in 1796, are largely elegiac, commemorating the deaths of both her parents and her three siblings, among others. She prepared a second verse collection for publication in 1802. The dedication to Countess Fitzwilliam is signed “E. K. Mathews” but she died before the book appeared; her husband saw to its posthumous publication and wrote an introductory poem lamenting her death. (Most unfairly, both volumes are sometimes attributed to him in library catalogues.) The couple were very poor and she struggled to supplement his salary as a young touring actor. She worked on a stage adaptation for his benefit at York in 1799 and may have done other unacknowledged writing for the stage. Titles that can be confidently attributed to her are a novel, What Has Been (1801), three books for children with Bewick engravings (1801-2), and a posthumous novel, Griffith Abbey (1807). She died of tuberculosis at York on 25 May 1802 after six months of painful illness and was buried in the churchyard of St. Mary Castlegate. The Memoirs of Charles Mathews published by his widow in 1838 do not do her justice. (Orlando 15 Apr. 2023; ODNB 15 Apr. 2023; findmypast.com 15 Apr. 2023; ancestry.com 15 Apr. 2023)
Other Names:
- Elizabeth Kirkham Strong
- Mrs. Charles Mathews