Author: Ryves, Elizabeth
Biography:
RYVES, Elizabeth (c. 1749-97: DIB)
There is no reliable information about her birth and parentage, but likely she was born in Ireland in about 1749. The most certain information comes from her letter of 10 June 1770 to David Garrick, enclosing a copy of her tragedy, “Adelaide,” which Garrick declined. She wrote from Woburn, Bedfordshire, and the letter establishes that her father, an army officer, had died when she was eight, leaving her mother with three young daughters. A male relation inherited the father’s estate and disputed the will’s provisions for Elizabeth’s mother and her children. Thirteen years later, in 1770, the matter remained unsettled and the family’s poverty had been aggravated by legal bills. Little and Kahrl speculate that her father may have been Robert Ryves who died in Limerick in 1755 but this is not certain and no public records or legal accounts have been found. Despite Garrick’s polite refusal of the play, Ryves went on to establish a creditable career for herself as an author and earned sympathy for her plight from Isaac D’Israeli (q.v.) who, under the heading “The Life of an Authoress,” devoted space to her in Calamities of Authors (1812). Her Poems includes an impressive list of subscribers and a novel, The Hermit of Snowden (1789), went to three editions. She translated several works from French, including Delacroix’s Review of the Constitutions of the Principal States of Europe (1792). (She also translated Rousseau’s Social Contract and Abbé Raynal’s Letter to the National Assembly although no surviving copies have been located.) She corresponded with Joseph Dodsley and may have contributed to his Annual Register; she also published verse in periodicals. However, she died in poverty on 29 Apr. 1797 in lodgings on Store Street, Tottenham Court Road, London. (DIB 18 Dec. 2024; ODNB 18 Dec. 2024; E. Owens Blackburne, Illustrious Irishwomen [1877]; D. M. Little & G. M. Kahrl, Letters of David Garrick [1963]; Susan Egenolf, “Elizabeth Ryves,” IWP) SR
Other Names:
- Eliza Ryves
- Miss Ryves