Ann Fisher

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AF was remarkable first for getting herself an education above the expectations of her class, and then for publishing (from her position within the later eighteenth-century provincial book trade) an English grammar and dictionary (both firsts for a woman), as well as a pedagogical anthology and works directed at children on English composition and spelling. Her works met with great success and wide circulation.
  • BirthName: Ann Fisher
  • Married: Slack
  • Indexed: Anne Fisher
    The English Short Title Catalogue, for instance, spells her name this way.
    ; A. Fisher; Ann Fisher Slack
Fleuron or printer's ornament from Ann Fisher's pedagogical anthology of poems and extracts, "The Pleasing Instructor. or Entertaining Moralist", 1756.

Milestones

Shortly before 9 December 1719

AF was born at the village of Oldscale, in the parish of Lorton in Cumberland.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

29 June 1745

AF 's A New Grammar and Spelling Book: Being the Most Easy Guide to Speaking and Writing the English Language Properly and Correctly was advertised as just out at Newcastle. It seems no copy survives.
Rodriguez-Gil, Maria. “Deconstructing Female Conventions: Ann Fisher (1719-1778)”. Historiographia Linguistica: International Journal for the History of Language Sciences, Vol.
33
, No. 1-2, John Benjamins, 2006, pp. 11-38.
11

1750

AF 's A New Grammar: Being the Most Easy Guide to Speaking and Writing the English Language Correctly appeared anonymously at Newcastle and London in a second edition. No copy of the first, advertised in 1745, is now known.
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Rodriguez-Gil, Maria. “Deconstructing Female Conventions: Ann Fisher (1719-1778)”. Historiographia Linguistica: International Journal for the History of Language Sciences, Vol.
33
, No. 1-2, John Benjamins, 2006, pp. 11-38.
11

1772

This year appeared the second edition (the first being not known) of another pedagogical work by AF which seems to have been her last: An Accurate New Spelling Dictionary and Complete English Expositor.
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

25 April 1778

AF died in Newcastle of asthma.
Horsley, P. M. “Some Local Ladies of the Eighteenth Century”. Heaton Works Journal, Vol.
6
, No. 33, C A Parsons and Company, pp. 131-8.
138
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Horsley, P. M. “Some Local Ladies of the Eighteenth Century”. Heaton Works Journal, Vol.
6
, No. 33, C A Parsons and Company, pp. 131-8.
138

Biography

Birth and Family

Shortly before 9 December 1719

AF was born at the village of Oldscale, in the parish of Lorton in Cumberland.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

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