Frances Arabella Rowden, later Frances de St Quentin, (1774 – ) was a British schoolmistress and poet. Her students included

Emma Roberts Emma Rose Roberts (born February 10, 1991) Additional on October 9, 2016 is an American actress, singer and producer. Known for her performances spanning multiple genres of film and television, her work in the horror film, horror and thriller ...

, Anna Maria Fielding,

Letitia Elizabeth Landon Letitia Elizabeth Landon (14 August 1802 – 15 October 1838) was an English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L.E.L. Landon's writings are emblematic of the transition from Romanticism to Victorian literature. Her first major b ...

, Frances Anne Kemble and

Rosina Bulwer Lytton Rosina Bulwer Lytton, Baroness Lytton, (née Doyle Wheeler; 4 November 1802 – 12 March 1882) was an Anglo-Irish writer who published fourteen novels, a volume of essays, and a volume of letters. In 1827, she married Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a no ...

Life

Rowden was the first of four daughters born to Frances and Robert Rowden. She was born in 1774 and in 1779 her family moved to Henley-on-Thames where her father borrowed money from her aunt who ran a school (where she was educated). Her father who been a dealer is spirits and drugs died in 1782 in debt. Rowden went on to work at Reading Abbey Girls' School which was run by the principal Dominique de St Quentin and Ann Pitts who was the senior mistress and his wife. The school's former pupils included

Jane Austen Jane Austen ( ; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for #List of works, her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century ...

. In 1801 she published ''A Poetical Introduction to the Study of Botany'' which was unusual in that it broke up the facts about botany with poems. Her book may have been seen as an uncontroversial alternative to

Erasmus Darwin Erasmus Robert Darwin (12 December 173118 April 1802) was an English physician. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosophy, natural philosopher, physiology, physiologist, Society for Effecting the ...

. During Rowden's eventful career she had a number of notable pupils. These included

actress An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. ...

Frances Anne Kemble, and the novelists Anna Maria Fielding,

, and

. She died around 1840.

References

External links

Frances Rowden
at womensprinthistoryproject.com 1774 births British poets British botanists Year of death missing {{UK-poet-stub