Anna Maria Mackenzie

01 January 1760 - 01 January 1816

AMM published sixteen novels between 1782 and 1809: anonymously, under her second and third married names and under a pseudonym. She also published (under her first married name) a biblical paraphrase, and she claimed (not very convincingly) that two of her fictions were translated. She is not a very good writer (her style is over-ornamented and sometimes confusing) but her career exemplifies almost every trend of the period. She began with epistolary works and moved to third-person narrative, which regularly sets her story proper within a frame story and often alleges some ancient archival source. From contemporary settings she moved to the historical, to the remote in time and place, to the gothic and then to horror fiction. As her career first became established she was well advertised and gratifyingly reviewed, but both advertising and reviews dried up with time.

Milestones

18 January 1783

The publisher Dodsley advertised as published the first, two-volume novel by the recently widowed Anna Maria Cox (later Mackenzie), whose identity was in any case concealed as a Lady: Burton-Wood. In a Series of Letters. It appeared by subscription.

Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.

1: 324

1792

AMM returned to the epistolary form for her next novel, Slavery: or, The Times, published by Robinson as by the author of Monmouth and The Danish Massacre, and neither advertised nor reviewed until the following year.

Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.

1: 568-9

By May 1809

AMM titled her intentionally final novel The Irish Guardian, or Errors of Eccentricity, and published it through Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme .

Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.

2: 302

Biography

Obscure Origins

From the little that is known about AMM 's personal history and first publication, it seems that she must have been born (as Anna Maria Wight, to a family probably resident in one of the villages just east of London) before 1760 at the latest.