Author: Webster, Ann
Biography:
WEBSTER, Ann (b 1797: findmypast.com)
Ann Webster was born in Great Grimsby, Lincolnshire, on 5 Dec. and baptised on 7 Dec. 1797 at St. James’s Church, now referred to as Grimsby Minister. Grimbarians John Webster and his wife Ann Lusby had five children; Ann was the second youngest. Her father died in 1805 and another misfortune soon followed. In her own words, “. . . the eighth year of my age was, to me, an important era:--I had the misfortune to pierce the crystalline orb of my right eye, with the sharp point of an instrument” (Solitary Musings, [iii]). The damage to the right eye caused inflammation in the left and Ann suffered a total loss of sight. In 1825, with her sister Mary Lusby Webster as her amanuensis, Ann produced a small volume of poetry. With mixed reviews from critics, Solitary Musings was often praised as a novelty due to the author’s lack of sight rather than noted for its literary merit. The Grolier Club Library in New York houses Ann’s “Letters and Poems: Manuscript, 1826-1827.” This collection includes a detailed list of authors Ann was familiar with and a variety of letters and poems both received and written by her. In 1826 Ann, a staunch Methodist, produced two political poems for Sir Thomas Phillipps’s failed bid for a seat in Grimsby parliament as an anti-Catholic candidate: "Invocation to the Freemen of Grimsby" to the tune of "Scots Wha Hae" and "Ode to Genius." Both poems were published as broadsides by Phillipps’s Middle Hill Press and were printed in Grimsby by Skelton. Also beginning in 1826, Ann Webster’s poems appeared sporadically in The Hull Packet and East Riding Times and The Imperial Magazine. After 1830, however, Ann Webster disappears from the formal record. (findmypast.com 7 Aug. 2022; The Ladies’ Monthly Museum 22 [1825], 225; Eric Holzenberg and Jerry Kelly, The Middle Hill Press: A Checklist of the Horblit Collection . . . Now in the Library of the Grolier Club [1997]; Imperial Magazine 8 [1826], 661, 1047-8, 9[1827], 1044-5, 11 [1829], 832-3, 12 [1830], 336) MJ