Sarah Pearson
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began placing poetry in magazines in the late 1780s, and went on to publish two collections, the first political-reformist and sentimental, and the second lighter in tone. She was also the author of a remarkable novel in the genre where the protagonist is an inanimate object.
Biography
Earlier versions of this Orlando entry argued correctly that S. Pearson the novelist was the same person as S. Pearson the poet, but wrongly that her given name was Susanna: in fact this name seems to have been first erroneously applied to her by
and
in A Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors in 1816. After this two streams diverged: books about Yorkshire poets called her Sarah, while reference books covering a broader field called her Susanna. Later the situation was further muddled by confusion with the Baptist
(1779-1827), whose deeply religious essays and poems were published at Ipswich in the year of her death.