Author: Penny, Anne
Biography:
PENNY, Anne, formerly CHRISTIAN, formerly HUGHES (1729-84: findmypast)
She was a Welshwoman, baptised at Bangor, Caernarvonshire, on 6 Jan 1729, the daughter of the Rev. Bulkeley Hughes and his wife Maria Owens, who had married at Llanrwst, Denbighshire, on 13 June 1723. Her father was vicar of Bangor and of Edern. In Aug. 1746 she married Captain Thomas Christian; on 18 Aug. 1747 they had their son Hugh Cloberly Christian—later a distinguished rear-admiral—baptised in Westminster, London. Her husband died in 1751 and Anne embarked on her career as a writer, publishing generally anonymously and by subscription. In 1756 she signed as “Ann Christian” the dedication to Cambridge: a Poem. By 1761, however, she had remarried and become Anne Penny; her husband was a Frenchman, Peter Penné or Penny, whose naval career had ended after the loss of a leg, and who worked in a customs house. They settled in London; there do not appear to have been more children. Samuel Johnson, the source and the dedicatee of her second venture, Anningait and Ajutt: a Greenland Tale (1761), was one of the subscribers to her Poems of 1771. Other notable supporters were Elizabeth Montagu and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Her second husband died in 1778 or 1779; her final volume, Poems, contains some translations from Welsh and attracted a large number of subscribers. She died in London and was buried at St. Anne’s, Soho, on 31 Mar. 1784. (findmypast.com 13 Sept. 2023; ancestry.com 13 Sept. 2023; ODNB 13 Sept. 2023)