Author: Maxwell, Georgiana Caroline
Biography:
MAXWELL, Georgiana Caroline, formerly PILKINGTON, SNOW, later SMYTH (1757-1838: ancestry.com)
Her nom de plume from 1808 to 1828 was Caroline Maxwell and she signed herself Georgiana Caroline Maxwell, from as address off Fitzroy Square, London, in her dedication of Feudal Tales to the Prince Regent in 1810. The record of her baptism at St. George’s, Hanover Square, London, on 9 Feb. 1758 following her birth on 21 Dec. 1757 has some inaccuracies but some details must be correct: it gives her full name as Georgina Carolina Pitt Pilkington, her father’s as John Cartwright Pilkington, and her mother’s first names as Dorothy Dorinda. Her father was in fact the Irish actor and writer John Carteret Pilkington (1730-63), son of the poet Laetitia Pilkington (1706-50), and husband of Ann (Smith) Pilkington, whom he had married in Dublin in 1753. The Pilkingtons were artistic, very well connected, but repeatedly in debt and surrounded by scandal. Caroline married John Snow of Clewer, Berkshire (b 1748), at St. George’s on 23 Mar. 1772 and had at least four children with him, the first baptised on 16 Jul. 1772. From later liaisons with the Americans Joseph Smyth and James Earl (or Earle) she had at least five more children between 1780 and 1793. Her godmother, Georgiana Caroline Carteret, Countess Cowper, disowned her for her misconduct. From various addresses in London she began writing verses and novels to support herself and her children. She published a novel a year between 1808 and 1812. In 1815 she was recommended to the RLF as a respectable and deserving widow living at 9, Cavendish Square, with five children, her only son an officer in the navy and one of her daughters a governess; they granted her £10. After a publishing hiatus she went back to work in the 1820s to produce a little more fiction but mainly instructive works for children, such as the Juvenile Tales listed here; an anthology of speeches by classical authors; a summary of English and Scottish history; an abridgement of the Apocrypha; and a History of the Holy Bible. “Caroline Smyth” died in Sept. 1838, her death registered at St. George’s, Hanover Square. (ancestry.com 25 Apr. 2023; findmypast.com 25 Apr. 2023; “Pilkington, John Carteret,” DIB; RLF #324; EN2)
Other Names:
- Caroline Maxwell