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Author: Prescott, Rachel

Biography:

PRESCOTT, Rachel (1766-1824: ODNB)

She was born in 1766, the daughter of John Prescott, a bookseller, and his wife Mary Pickering, who had married in Manchester the previous year. A second daughter, Ann, was born in 1769. Her father later became a printer and publisher of Prescott’s Manchester Journal which he issued from his house in Old Millgate. He later retired to Bedford, Leigh, Lancs. with his daughters. He died in 1811, leaving his estate to them. Ann died in 1817, with her sister as main beneficiary. With independent means, Rachel Prescott engaged in philanthropy for the poor in her parish and supported the established church. Earlier, in the 1790s, she had radical, possibly dissenting, sympathies, writing a poem in praise of Mary Wollstonecraft and corresponding with Godwin in 1799 on the subject of marriage and moral union. Unusually, for the time, she went on a walking tour of Wales and the west of England with two male friends and wrote up an account of it, but no published version or manuscript has been located. She seems to have formed an attachment for her publisher, George Nicholson (1760-1825), the exact nature of which is unclear. (He was a married man with his wife continuing his business at Stourport after his death in 1825.) She died at Bedford and was buried at St. John’s, Manchester, 10 Dec. 1824. (ancestry.co.uk 21 Jul. 2020; findmypast.com 21 Jul. 2020; ODNB 21 Jul. 2020; William Godwin, Letters [2014] 2:77-79; Manchester Mercury 16 Apr. 1811, 8 Jul. 1817; Lancaster Gazette 18 Dec. 1824; C. H. Timperley, Annals of Manchester [1839] 52, 71;  J. E. Bailey, Manchester City News 22 Feb. 1879) AA

 

Other Names:

  • Miss Prescott
 

Books written (2):

London: for the author by Richardsons, 1799
London: Longman, 1812