Author: Vince, Elizabeth
Biography:
VINCE, Elizabeth (fl 1829)
Essential information about Elizabeth Vince and her co-author Susan Winter (q.v.) is to be found in their sole publication The Mystic Wreath, a substantial compendium of charades, riddles, rebuses, and the like, intended for social evening entertainments, published in London in 1829. Many of the items included are in verse and the volume ends with a long verse epistle from Elizabeth, on a visit to London, to Susan, left behind in Manningtree, Essex; the letter includes coded solutions to the preceding puzzles. The preface coyly refuses to reveal the ages or circumstances of the authors, who are identified only by their first names, but some clues may be found in the 12-page subscription list of names collected from various London boroughs and from east-coast towns such as Manningtree, Ipswich, Colchester, Harwich, and Great Yarmouth. Several of the subscribers were army officers; there is one Lord Chief Justice. Mr. J. Vince and Miss Louisa Vince of Dedham, Essex, subscribed, as did Mr. J. W. Winter of Manningtree, Essex, who was Susan’s husband. Elizabeth Vince might have been the sister of Louisa Vince (b 1804) and in that case was probably baptised in 1798 in Brightlingsea, Essex, the daughter of William and Elizabeth Vince; or she might have been a relative but not a sister. The most likely—but still not certain--candidate is the Elizabeth Vince who was baptised at Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk, in 1801, the daughter of a different William and Elizabeth Vince, shortly before they moved permanently to Dedham and became the parents of at least eight more children (but of no Louisa or Susan). Susan was a native of Dedham and might have been a schoolmate or another Vince cousin of Elizabeth’s. Susan Winter and Elizabeth Vince were thus contemporaries, one a young mother and the other unmarried, when they produced their book of word-games. According to Stainforth, Elizabeth later married and became Elizabeth Winter, but there are no public records to substantiate that claim and no reliable information has been found about her later life. (ancestry.com 11 Apr. 2024; findmypast.com 11 Apr. 2024; Stainforth; Chelmsford Chronicle 8 Dec. 1837) HJ
Other Names:
- Elizabeth