Author: Steele, Anne
Biography:
STEELE, Anne (1717-78: ODNB)
pseudonym Theodosia
All of Steele's publications included in this bibliography are posthumous, several of them prefaced with hagiographic memoirs. But her reputation as a hymn-writer was established in her lifetime under her pseudonym Theodosia, and consolidated in her first collection, Poems on Subjects Chiefly Devotional (2 vols. 1760). (Later editions under this title contain work unpublished before 1780.) She lived all her life in Broughton, Hampshire. Her father William Steele (1689-1769), a timber merchant, was also a Baptist preacher and hymn-writer. Her mother Anne Froude died in 1720; William Steele married Anne Cator in 1723. Steele and her sister were well educated. At 15, she was baptised into her father's Particular Baptist sect. Legend had it that her friend James Elcombe, who was accidentally drowned in 1737, was her fiancé, but that may not have been the case. She declined at least one proposal of marriage later, choosing to devote herself to religious and domestic duties--among them caring for her father after the death of her stepmother in 1760. She herself became bedridden in her final years and was nursed by her niece Mary Steele. She died in the family home, Broughton House. (ODNB 19 Oct. 2020; Orlando)
Other Names:
- Mrs. Anne Steele
- Mrs. Steele
- Steele