Author: Roscoe, Jane Elizabeth
Biography:
ROSCOE, Jane Elizabeth, later HORNBLOWER (1797-1853: ancestry.co.uk)
She was born on 4 June 1797, the youngest daughter of William Roscoe (q.v.) and his wife Jane Griffies (1759-1824); she was known as “Jenny” in the family. Her sister Mary Anne Jevons (1795-1845) (q.v.) and her niece Margaret Sandbach (1812-1852) were also poets. After the war her father’s bank collapsed and he was declared bankrupt; the family moved from Allerton Hall to Lodge Lane, Liverpool. She contributed to the family collection Poems for Youth (2 vols. 1820-21) and published her own collection Poems (1820). She also contributed to a number of Liverpool-based Annuals, Winter’s Wreath, Remembrance, and the Juvenile Keepsake, the last two being edited by her brother Thomas Roscoe (1791-1871). After marriage, she published Poems (1843) and contributed two anti-slavery sonnets to the Liberty Bell (1848-49); there were also three novels published under her name after her death, Vara, or the Child of Adoption (1854), Nellie of Truro (1856), and "The Julia": A Tale (1859). She married the Rev. Francis Hornblower (1812-53), a Unitarian Minister, at Toxteth Park Presbyterian, on 24 Apr. 1838. He died on 31 Jan. 1853, aged 40, at Nantwich where he had been Minister since 1849. She died 2 Aug. 1853 at 125 Chatham Street, Liverpool. (ancestry.co.uk 19 Sept. 2020; Liverpool Standard 1 May 1838, 9 Aug. 1853; Christian Reformer [1853] 197; Manchester Courier 5 Feb. 1853; GM Sept. 1853, 326; Boyle 245-6; Frederick Warburton Dunston, Roscoeana [1906]; A. Ashfield, ed. Romantic Women Poets, II, 1788-1848 [1998], 95-104) AA
Other Names:
- J. E. Roscoe