Frances Reynolds

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FR , active in the later eighteenth century, was the author of poems (one printed), a published treatise on aesthetics, essays diary entries, and a memoir of Samuel Johnson which reached print years after her death. She was also a painter of miniatures, genre pieces, portraits, and history paintings. Yet she has the misfortune of being remembered mostly in context of the eminent men she knew, particularly her brother Sir Joshua Reynolds .
Wendorf, Richard. Sir Joshua Reynolds. Harvard University Press.
69

Milestones

10 May 1729

FR was born at Plympton Erle in Devon, the youngest of eleven children who survived their birth.
“FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua. The Letters of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Editors Ingamells, John and John Edgcumbe, Yale University Press.
264

By 21 July 1781

FR showed a draft of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste and of the Origin of our Ideas of Beauty, &c to Samuel Johnson : he pressed her to publish it, but to revise it first.
Johnson, Samuel. The Letters of Samuel Johnson. Editor Redford, Bruce, Princeton University Press.
3: 355-6

1785

FR privately printed her work of aesthetic theory, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste and of the Origin of our Ideas of Beauty, &c, in a limited edition of 250 copies, dedicated to Elizabeth Montagu .
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Reynolds, Frances. “Introduction”. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty, &c, edited by James L. Clifford, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, p. i - xi.
iv

1 November 1807

FR died at her own house in Queen Square, London.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Later 1831

Most . . . but not all
Hill, George Birkbeck, editor. Johnsonian Miscellanies. Clarendon Press.
1: xi
of FR 's Recollections of Dr. Johnson was printed by John Wilson Croker in his edition of Boswell 's Life of Samuel Johnson, as one of the numerous additions
Boswell, James. The Life of Samuel Johnson. Editor Croker, John Wilson, Vol.
5 vols
, John Murray.
Title Page
promised on the title-page.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Thomas Babington Macaulay
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

1897

FR 's Recollections of Dr. Johnson, which had gone through several drafts in manuscript and reached print in part in 1831, was published in its entirety in George Birkbeck Hill 's Johnsonian Miscellanies.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

Biography

Birth and Family

10 May 1729

FR was born at Plympton Erle in Devon, the youngest of eleven children who survived their birth.
“FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua. The Letters of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Editors Ingamells, John and John Edgcumbe, Yale University Press.
264