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Author: Montolieu, Maria Henrietta

Biography:

MONTOLIEU, Maria Henrietta (1765-1836: ancestry.com and Sun)

She was one of the daughters of James Modyford Heywood of Maristow, Devon, whose fortune was founded on slave plantations in Jamaica, and his wife Catherine Hartopp. She married a descendant of Huguenot emigrés, Louis (or Lewis) Montolieu de St. Hippolite, F.S.A. and banker, at St. George's Hanover Square in 1786. They had one son (d 1809) and two daughters who survived infancy, Maria and Julia, to whom she addressed her first original work, The Enchanted Plants. Before then she had translated the Abbé Delille's poem The Gardens from French. Her husband died in 1817; their daughters married well. Mrs. Montolieu, as she was known, brought out another poem based on a foreign source--in this case, German--in 1823. Her second marriage (1824) was to Henry Crockett Clifton. She died in Twickenham on 16 Oct. 1836, her death confirmed in the London Sun of Oct. 31. She was buried at Kensal Green. She is not to be confused with Isabelle Montolieu (i.e. Jeanne-Isabelle-Pauline Polier de Bottons, Baronne de Montolieu), who wrote prose fiction in French. (ancestry.com 11 Apr. 2020; Charles Edmund Lart, Huguenot Pedigrees [1967] 1: 63; LBS; contributions from AA)

 

Other Names:

  • Madame Montolieu
  • Mrs. Montolieu
 

Books written (9):

2nd edn. London: printed by Thomas Bensley, 1801
London: printed by T. Bensley, 1802
London: R. H. Evans and J. Eedes, 1823
Philadelphia: A. R. Poole's Juvenile Library, 1826