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.
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, 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. 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, 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. 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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