Author: Sutcliff, Ann
Biography:
SUTCLIFF, Ann, formerly HIRST (1767-1800: ancestry.co.uk)
She was born into a Quaker family on 13 Apr. 1767 at Fairfield, near Sheffield, Yorkshire, the seventh of at least eight children of John Hirst, cutler, and Ann Fairbank, who had married in 1753. Nothing is known of her education. She married Richard Sutcliff (1764-1828), silversmith, on 12 June 1788 at Sheffield. They went on to have nine children in ten years, eight of whom survived her. She fell ill after the birth of her ninth child, Robert, in Oct. 1799 and died, aged 32, on 2 Mar. 1800 at Sheffield. Her poems were published posthumously and printed by James Montgomery (q.v.) at the Iris Office, as a legacy for her children, rather than by subscription, suggesting that the family was not in financial need. They mostly contain poems prior to marriage and a few poems by friends and relatives but are chiefly notable for the two poems she addressed to her husband which express the anxieties and hopes of a woman entering marriage and giving birth: “Written a Little Time before Marriage,” “Written a Few Weeks After the Birth of Her Seventh Child.” Her poem on her impending marriage opened with “Adieu to Poetry!”--signalling the subordination of her poetic desires to marital duties, a fairly common but not universal experience in the period. (ancestry.co.uk 25 Sept. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 25 Sep. 2024; “Life of the Author,” Poems [1800], 5-7; Newsam, 147; Friends’ Books 2: 686) AA