Author: Richardson, Charlotte Caroline
Biography:
RICHARDSON, Charlotte Caroline formerly RICHARDSON (1796-1854: ancestry.co.uk)
Born at Lambeth, Surrey, she was the daughter of Elizabeth (Smales) and Robert Richardson; her parents also wrote verse and they met through both being contributors to the Ladies’ Diary. Elizabeth came from Hinderwell, Yorkshire, and Charlotte, who had delicate health, was sent there to live with an aunt a year before her father died in 1804. Her mother opened a girls’ school in Vauxhall and Charlotte moved there in about 1817. She submitted verse to the Lady’s Magazine and the Ladies’ Diary. The editor of the latter, Dr. Charles Hutton, praised her poems and Harvest is dedicated to him (he was also a subscriber). Her novel, The Soldier’s Child; or, Virtue Triumphant, was published in 1821. On 5 Nov. 1826 she married John Richardson, a harbourmaster or wharfinger, in Lambeth; they seem not to have had any children. Two sisters are recorded as living with them in both the 1841 and the 1851 Census: Elizabeth Anne (who also wrote verse; her married name was Baker) and Eleanor (married name was Long). Her mother died in 1841 and Charlotte contributed verse to a memorial collection, Poems by Mrs Richardson (1846). She died in 1854. (ancestry.co.uk 1 Sept. 2020; findmypast.co.uk 1 Sept. 2020; “Memoir,” in Poems by Mrs. Richardson (Formerly “Betty Smales”) [1846]) SR