Author: Turner, Annette
Biography:
TURNER, Annette, later TINSLEY (1808-85: ODNB)
She was born on 11 Jan. 1808 at Preston, Lancashire, the daughter of Thomas Milner Turner (1778-1849), a strolling player, and Anne Caruthers (1772-1852), a zealous Catholic. She was always known as “Annie.” Both parents experienced periods of mental instability. Her father suffered from delusions and paranoia and was “always wrong-headed.”After her sister Mary’s disastrous marriage and early death, her mother became “deranged and for two years wandered the streets of London a maniac” (RLF 609/1). She was educated at home and published the undistinguished volume listed here, The Children of the Mist (1827). It was unsuccessful and she was arrested for a debt of £35 to her publisher, despite being a minor. Charles Tinsley (1805/6-1899), a solicitor’s clerk, encountered her in a “sponginghouse,”secured her release, and married her on 1 Aug. 1833 at St. Mary’s, Bryanston Square, Westminster, London. They went on to have six children. Her husband never earned more than £150 per annum and they struggled financially. In 1882 she complained that “my married life soon knocked the poetry out of me”(Peet 22-3). From 1827 to 1871 she made multiple applications to the RLF and received just over £150. She published one further and much better volume of poetry, Lays for the Thoughtful and Solitary (1848), and at least ten novels in separate and serial form, of which Margaret (1853), Women As They Are (1854), and Darkest before Dawn (1864) are worth another look. With her family background and the trials and tribulations of her marriage, her novels were thought too painful and publishers often passed them up. She conceded, “The world quarrels with me for sending forth pictures of the dark side of life, not caring to understand that I have known no other” (RLF 609, 26, 27, 45). The family lived for long periods in Rotherham, Sheffield, and London before settling at Gravesend, Kent, to be near a married niece. She died on 20 Jan. 1885, aged 77, at 83 Windmill Street, Milton, Gravesend, Kent, and was buried as a Roman Catholic. Charles Tinsley died on 7 Apr. 1899, aged 93, and was buried alongside her. (ODNB 20 Jan. 2025; Orlando; RLF 609; Henry Peet, Mrs Charles Tinsley: Novelist and Poet [1930]; John Guest, Rotherham Writers in Verse, Appendix I, 38-44; GRO death cert.) AA
Other Names:
- Miss Annette Turner