Author: Walsh, Ann
Biography:
WALSH, Ann (1775-1851:ancestry.co.uk)
She was born on 17 June 1775 in Fleet Street and baptised at St. Dunstan’s in the West on 17 July, the eldest daughter of Francis Walsh and his wife Ann Wells, who had married in 1770. Her father was for many years Chief Clerk of the Three Per Cent Consols Office in the Bank of England. Her brother Benjamin Walsh (1778-1856) brought scandal on the family in 1812 when he was convicted of embezzlement but avoided capital conviction and was pardoned. When subscribers were solicited for Ann’s volume, 3000 mostly well-connected people signed up so the reputational damage cannot have been great. The volume was printed by another brother, Joseph Walsh (1777-1845), a law stationer at the Inner Temple who also took 12 copies. The eldest brother Francis (1771-1801) had married into the family of Lady Ford of Clifton, and thereafter Ann and her unmarried sister Sarah (1781-1854) lived in Bristol and Bath. Joseph and his family also moved to Bath. For many years, Ann lived at 13 Hope Square, Hotwells, Bristol, where she died on 30 Mar. 1851. Poems (1812) has sometimes been incorrectly attributed to Mary Lamb. In the poem "To My Sister" (102-5), the author identifies her sister as Sarah and herself as Anna; "To My sister Mary" is almost certainly to Benjamin’s wife; "To My Nephew Francis" is to the son of her brother Francis. Members of her mother’s family (Wells), the families of her brothers’ spouses (Neate, Bidwell, Clarke, Ford), and Thomas Nisbett (Benjamin’s business partner) also subscribed. The Bodley copy (280.f.2154.1) has a contemporary inscription, “Walsh’s poems.” (ancestry.co.uk 6 May 2021; GM Jan. 1801, 91, and Aug. 1810, 190, and Nov. 1845, 548; Bristol Times 5 Apr. 1851; G. A. Anderson, TLS 21 Aug. 1924; Cyrus Redding, Fifty Years’ Recollections [1858], 1: 221-3.) AA
Other Names:
- Miss Walsh