Ann Masterman Skinn

01 January 1747 - 23 March 1789

AMS is to all intents and purposes a one-work author. Her eighteenth-century epistolary novel, The Old Maid; or, The History of Miss Ravensworth, is vigorous and highly unusual; but any other work is still untraced.

Milestones

1747

Ann Masterman (later AMS ) was born, probably in York, which she names as her native place on the title-page of her novel.

Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.

By early December 1770

AMS published (by subscription, at London and York, with 1771 on its title-page) her single identified novel: The Old Maid; or, The History of Miss Ravensworth. In a Series of Letters.

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

1: 167-8

English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.

23 March 1789

AMS died at Margate in Kent, in her early forties, in great poverty.

Staves, Susan. “Matrimonial Discord in Fiction and in Court: The Case of Ann Masterman”. Fetter’d or Free?: British Women Novelists 1670-1815, edited by Cecilia Macheski and Mary Anne Schofield, Ohio University Press, pp. 169-85.

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Biography

Birth and Family

1747

Ann Masterman (later AMS ) was born, probably in York, which she names as her native place on the title-page of her novel.

Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.