Author: Parker, Frances
Biography:
PARKER, Frances, formerly TALBOT, Countess of Morley (1782-1857: ancestry.com)
The New York Public Library, which holds one of her ms letters, refers to her as “a self-published author and illustrator”—an unusual description for an unusual woman. At her death, an obituary declared that “few women of wit” would be more universally missed in London society than she would. Jane Austen sent her one of her few free author’s copies of Emma in 1815 and received a polite note in reply. The Dowager Countess of Morley began life as Frances Talbot, daughter of a gentleman surgeon, Thomas Talbot, and his wife Frances Ransome, who had married in 1777; she was baptised at Wymondham, Norfolk, on 11 Jan. 1782. On 22 Aug. 1809 she married John Parker, Baron Boringdon (Earl Morley from 1815), at St. Marylebone, London, as his second wife. (The first had divorced him but the second marriage was a success and lasted until the death of the earl in 1840.) They had a son and a daughter but the latter died in childhood. Some of her publications appear to have been produced to amuse family and friends; others, presented under an editorial fiction though they were of her own composition, were more widely available. They all show a keen sense of the ridiculous and some, including The Flying Burgermaster (1832) and a shorter poem, The Nose (1831), include lively caricatures or illustrations by the author. Most are in prose, notably a pamphlet Proposal for enlivening conversation, subtitled The Royal Bazaar (1832); a novel, Dacre (1834); and a “tale” in two volumes, A Man without a Name (1852). After the death of her husband, upon which their son inherited the earldom, she lived with him and his family. The 1851 Census found them at Kent House, in Knightsbridge, London; she died at the family seat of Saltram House, near Plymouth, Devon, on 6 Dec. 1857 and was buried in the family vault at St. Mary, Plympton, Plymouth. (ancestry.com 17 Aug. 2023; findmypast.com 17 Aug. 2023; GM Jan. 1858, 117; “Frances Talbot,” Wikipedia 17 Aug. 2023; Brighton Gazette 17 Dec. 1857; Exeter and Plymouth Gazette 19 Dec. 1857)