Author: Thompson, Eliza
Biography:
THOMPSON, Eliza (fl 1787-91)
Pseudonym “a Lady”
Miss Eliza Thompson first contributed poems to “the Daily Papers” under the pen-name “Eliza.” Poems on Various Subjects (1787), her collection of occasional verse, was published by subscription with a list of subscribers that includes many ladies, several of them with titles, and a fair number of soldiers with ranks from lieutenant to general. An anomalous foreigner is His Excellency Count Bruhl. Among mainly light and playful poems an “Epitaph” and an “Elegy” to a “guardian of the poor,” Mr. Andrew Ewart of Dumfries, Scotland, stand out: his widow and son subscribed. The review in MR was slighting and Eliza replied with Retaliation (1791) as “a Lady” questioning the reviewer’s judgment given that by dismissing her work (she quotes the offending comments) the review had “obliquely” attacked a man of irreproachable morals—presumably Ewart. She had evidently been offended also by positive reviews of a religious work that she judged to be profoundly irreligious, The Restitution of All Things (1785) by the Rev. James Brown, and she reveals that Brown (who is also on the subscribers’ list) had been the model for the coxcombical young clergyman in her poem “The Christmas Frolic,” which she reprints with Retaliation. Thompson is not known to have published anything else under that name. Of course she might have used a married name later. It seems likely that she was Scottish and had been at school with some of the subscribers, but her name is too common to extract any more certain information about her from public records. (MR 77 [1787], 493-4; ancestry.com 21 Aug. 2024; findmypast.com 21 Aug. 2024) HJ
Other Names:
- Miss Eliza Thompson