Author: Webster, Grace
Biography:
WEBSTER, Grace (1802-74: ancestry.co.uk)
She wrote prolifically across a range of genres—poetry, fiction, biography, didactic works—but little is known about her life. Her Memoir of Dr Alexander Webster, With an Account of Dr. Charles Webster (1855) includes information about her father, the Rev. John Webster, but without identifying her relationship to him. John Webster (d 5 Feb. 1806), minister of St. Peter’s Episcopal Chapel in Edinburgh, was a nephew of Charles Webster who had founded the chapel. He married Catharine Ogilvie; they had at least two sons (both died in childhood) and three daughters, including Grace who was born in Edinburgh on 29 Oct. 1802. A daughter, Isabella, was born in 1799 but died young and is commemorated in one of Grace’s poems, dated 1 Jan. 1832. The Edinburgh Literary Album, a mix of prose and verse, was her first published work and is dedicated to Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey. Her other works include: Ingliston (1840), an edition with a memoir of Lewis Bayly’s The Practice of Piety (1842), The Disputed Inheritance (1845), Margaret Inglis, Her Life and Trials (1848), Raymond Revilloyd: a Romance (1849), A Tract for Moral Agency (1857), The Last Enemy (1859), A Skeleton Novel (1866), and Strathbachan Hospitality (1868). In about 1845 she was lodged in the Lunatic Asylum in Morningside, Edinburgh, and in May 1846 her friends applied to the RLF for assistance to prevent her being transferred to the asylum for paupers. The fund awarded £35 which Webster subsequently sought unsuccessfully to return. She did, however, apply on her own behalf in 1860 and was voted a further £25. On 6 Oct. 1860 she was admitted to the Royal Edinburgh Asylum but at the time of the 1861 Census she was living in the family home of Spittalfield House, Edinburgh. In 1871 she was at 32 St. Patrick Square but another admission to the asylum was on 6 Jan. 1873. She never married and no public record of her death has been found. A newspaper notice gives the date of her death as 27 Feb. 1874. (ancestry.co.uk 17 Feb. 2022; G. Webster, Memoir of Dr Alexander Webster [1855]; WorldCat; Paisley and Renfrewshire Gazette 7 Mar. 1874; RLF file 1139) SR