Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Heyrick
-
Standard Name: Heyrick, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Coltman
Married Name: Elizabeth Heyrick
Though, as a woman, she worked behind the scenes (not in parliament but through print and private direct action) EH
of Leicester was a major, under-recognised figure in the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade. Her pamphlet publications address war, cruelty to animals, workers' wages, prison reform, and other social and political topics as well as abolition. Her political thinking on many points startlingly anticipates later socialist positions. She also published lessons for children and a conduct book. The first of these is the genre in which, in the early nineteenth century, her writing career began. Though her sister knew of only sixteen of her pamphlets, the count has since risen steeply. But their unavailability in major reference libraries has hampered recognition of her.
Corfield, Kenneth. “Elizabeth Heyrick: Radical Quaker”. Religion in the Lives of English Women, 1760-1930, edited by Gail Malmgreen, Indiana University Press, pp. 41-67.
SW
wrote a poem, To the Memory of Elizabeth Heyrick, on the death on 18 October 1831 of her close friend (with whose abolitionist writings of 1824 Heyrick's memoirist seems to associate her).
Beale, Catherine Hutton, editor. Catherine Hutton and Her Friends. Cornish Brothers.
216-17, 206
Textual Production
Susanna Watts
Her claim to be acting with two friends may reflect the involvement of the sisters Elizabeth Heyrick
and Mary Ann Coltman
.
Aucott, Shirley. Susanna Watts (1768 to 1842): author of Leicester’s first guide, abolitionist and bluestocking. Shirley Aucott.
26
Cockshaw
, the publisher, took in letters to the editor: that is...
Intertextuality and Influence
Susanna Watts
SW
gives one of her imaginary editors, Philanthropy, a painfully emotional as well as judgemental attitude to slavery. The second number includes Remarks on the Descent of the Africans from Ham, in the form...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Susanna Watts
This includes poems on Elizabeth Heyrick
, William Cowper
, and Sir Walter Scott
, A Prayer: for the Slaves, Delicacy: Inscribed to the Ladies, several of natural description, and yet others on...