Author: Sanders, Charlotte Elizabeth
Biography:
SANDERS, Charlotte Elizabeth (1768-1834: ancestry.com)
She was almost certainly the daughter of Elizabeth and John Sanders baptised at St. George the Martyr, Queen Square, London, on 30 Aug. 1768, and the woman of that name who died unmarried and was buried at St. Andrew’s, Clifton, Gloucestershire, on 12 June 1834. Her only collection of poetry was published not long after she left boarding school. The subscription list is revealing: while there were subscribers from various parts of the country, many of them Misses (presumably former schoolmates), the overwhelming majority lived in London, specifically in the area of (what is now) Bloomsbury and the Inns of Court, with several at addresses in Great Ormond Street or on Queen Square. The contents are also revealing, mostly occasional poems addressed to her sister Mary or to unnamed young ladies and gentlemen, for instance the “Elegy on the Death of a favourite Squirrel, addressed to a Young Lady” and “Lines addressed to a Gentleman, who touched some Roses of the Authoress’s making, and thought they were real.” Literary references include Goethe’s Werther and the poems of Anna Seward (q.v.). Several poems express admiration for the philanthropist Jonas Hanway (1712-86), governor of the Foundling Hospital in Coram’s Fields, who had just died. As “C. Sanders” or “Charlotte Sanders” she later wrote two successful prose fictions for children that saw multiple editions, The Little Family (1797) and Holidays at Home (1803). The 1798 Preface for the former is dated from Bath. It might have been health concerns that led Sanders to leave London for the spas of Bath and Clifton, but public records are few. (ancestry.com 15 Sept. 2024; findmypast.com 15 Sept. 2024; ECCO)
Other Names:
- Charlotte Eliz. Sanders