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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, also 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). At the time of the 1861 Census she was still living in the family home of Spittalfield House, Edinburgh; in 1871 she was at 32 St. Patrick Square. She never married and no public record of her death has been found. An obituary was in the John O’ Groat Journal on 25 June 1874 but does not give a date of death. (ancestry.co.uk 17 Feb. 2022; G. Webster, Memoir of Dr Alexander Webster [1855]; WorldCat; John O’ Groat Journal 25 June 1874)

 

Books written (1):

Edinburgh/ London: William Blackwood and Sons/ T. Cadell, 1835