Author: Pearson, Sarah
Biography:
PEARSON, Sarah (1767-1833: ancestry.co.uk)
She is first mentioned by David Rivers with the courtesy title “Mrs. S. Pearson” (Literary Memoirs [1798], 2: 121). A mistake in Watkins (1816) supplied an incorrect first name, Susanna, and this was replicated in Robert Watts’s Bibliotheca Britannica (1824) and all library catalogues and bibliographical sources thereafter. A review of James Montgomery’s (q.v.) poems under the running title “Sheffield Poets” in the Cambridge Quarterly Review(2.i. [Sept. 1824], 78-108) referred to her as “Miss Pearson, who is still living, and now waning in life . . . a native of Sheffield” (84) and for the first time identified her as the author of the two works listed here and the novel The Medallion (1794). In Newsam's Poets of Yorkshire (1845) 111-12, John Holland (q.v.), who had extensive knowledge of the Sheffield literary world, correctly identified her as Sarah Pearson and supplied her age and date of death. Sarah Pearson was baptised 6 June 1767 at the Cathedral church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Sheffield, the daughter of William Pearson, linen-draper, and his wife Sarah (possibly Broadbent) who had married in the same church on 22 Oct.1764. Prior to her first independent publication, as “Angelina” she contributed poems to the Sheffield Register and the Literary Magazine and British Review; later she published several poems in the Poetical Register. Her first volume was well subscribed but the second struggled to get a hundred subscribers. In 1825 she appealed to James Montgomery to help her publish a further volume. He was helpful and thought highly of her but was pessimistic: “No bookseller will buy what he cannot sell.” The volume never materialised. She died on 21 May 1833 and was buried at Attercliffe Christchurch, Sheffield, on 24 May 1833, aged 64 years. Local newspaper death notices first identified her as Sarah Pearson. Her will, written 19 Nov. 1832 and proved on 23 July 1833, with James Montgomery as one of the executors, left instructions to her friend Barbara Hofland (Barbara Hoole, q.v.) to review her manuscripts and burn her correspondence. She asked to be buried in Attercliffe, her parents’ church., with an inscription on her grave by Montgomery. (ancestry.co.uk 5 Oct. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 5 Oct. 2022; Orlando 5 Oct. 2022; Sheffield Independent 25 May 1833; Will of Sarah Pearson, York Probate Index July 1833, v.188.f.56; Executors Papers, Derbyshire RO; EN, I. 621-2) AA
Other Names:
- S. Pearson
- Susanna Pearson