Author: Ward, Mary
Biography:
WARD, Mary (fl 1807)
Her name is such a common one that it has not been possible to identify her with certainty. Her only known literary work is the collection of poems, Original Poetry, published by subscription in Bath, Somerset, in 1807. Internal evidence indicates that she lived (at least at that time) in Brixham, Devon. The subscription list is modest but respectable. One of her acquaintances was Robert Carr Brackenbury (q.v.) of Raithby Hall in Lincolnshire. The book is dedicated to the Countess of Loudon and Moira, i.e. Flora Muir Campbell (1780-1840), daughter of the Scottish Earl of Loudon who had married the Irish Earl of Moira, Francis Rawdon-Hastings, in 1804. The Mary Wards of Brixham in the genealogical databases—some of them married and some unmarried in 1807—appear to have all been socially working-class women, not a likely match for the author. A contemporary review in 1808 grumbled about “bundles of approved images and sentiments . . . gaudy words . . . artifice and constraint” (Eclectic Review). (ancestry.com 19 Apr. 2024; findmypast.com 19 Apr. 2024; Eclectic Review 4 [1808], 182)