Eliza Fenwick (; 1 February 1767 – 8 December 1840) was an English author, whose works include ''Secresy; or The Ruin on the Rock'' (1795) and several children's books. She was born in
Cornwall
Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlan ...
, married an alcoholic, and had two children by him. She left him and eventually went to live with her children in
Barbados
Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate ...
, where she ran a school with her daughter.
[Jarndyce Booksellers' catalogue ''Women Writers 1795–1927 Part I: A–F'' (London, Summer 2017).]
Biography
Eliza Jaco was born on 1 February 1767 at
Pelynt
Pelynt ( kw, Pluwnennys, Pluwnonna) is a civil parish and village in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is 20 miles (32 km) west of Plymouth and four miles (6.5 km) west-northwest of Looe. Pelynt had a population of around 1,124 ...
, Cornwall. Her parents were Peter and Elizabeth Jaco (née Hawksworth), and she was baptized Elizabeth on 25 June 1766. She married in the 1780s a writer named John Fenwick, who became an alcoholic and heavily in debt.
They had two children, Eliza and Orlando. She took up tasks such as working as a governess to make family ends meet, but eventually left Fenwick and moved to Ireland as a governess in 1807.
By this time, Fenwick's daughter had moved to the
West Indies
The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Great ...
to be an actress, and married William Rutherford, by whom she had four children. Fenwick and her son, Orlando, joined her daughter in Barbados in 1814, but Orlando died of
yellow fever
Yellow fever is a viral disease of typically short duration. In most cases, symptoms include fever, chills, loss of appetite, nausea, muscle pains – particularly in the back – and headaches. Symptoms typically improve within five days. In ...
in 1816. In 1819, Fenwick's son-in-law left the family, leaving the mother and daughter to bring up the four children. The pair ran a
secondary school, which provided income and ensured the children's own education. Fenwick owned several enslaved people who worked in the school and her household.
Fenwick's daughter died in 1828, leaving her to raise the children alone.
[ By 1835 she was living in the United states and she died in 1840 in ]Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...
.
Writing
Throughout her life Fenwick corresponded with friends who included Mary Hays, Thomas Holcroft
Thomas Holcroft (10 December 174523 March 1809) was an English dramatist, miscellanist, poet and translator. He was sympathetic to the early ideas of the French Revolution and helped Thomas Paine to publish the first part of ''The Rights of Ma ...
, William Godwin
William Godwin (3 March 1756 – 7 April 1836) was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism and the first modern proponent of anarchism. Godwin is most famous f ...
, Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft (, ; 27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationsh ...
, Charlotte Turner Smith, and Charles
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was ...
and Mary Lamb
Mary Anne Lamb (3 December 1764 – 20 May 1847) was an English writer. She is best known for the collaboration with her brother Charles on the collection ''Tales from Shakespeare'' (1807). Mary suffered from mental illness, and in 1796, aged 3 ...
. Much of the correspondence survives. Her epistolary novel
An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of letters. The term is often extended to cover novels that intersperse documents of other kinds with the letters, most commonly diary entries and newspaper clippings, and sometimes considered ...
''Secresy; or The Ruin on the Rock'' was published as "By a Woman" in 1795. Her subsequent works were written for children, sometimes under the pseudonym Rev. David Blair.[ ''Mary and Her Cat'' (1804) was advertised as being "in words not exceeding two syllables".][Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy (eds): ''The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present'' (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 365.]
References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Fenwick. Eliza
1767 births
1840 deaths
18th-century English writers
18th-century British women writers
19th-century English women writers
19th-century British educators
British emigrants to Barbados
British governesses
British slave owners
Novelists from Cornwall
Schoolteachers from Cornwall
British women children's writers
English women novelists
Pseudonymous women writers
People from Pelynt
19th-century women educators
18th-century English women
18th-century English people
18th-century pseudonymous writers
19th-century pseudonymous writers