Agnes Strickland

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AS , writing in the middle nineteenth century, won renown as a historian and biographer, particularly of the British royal family and particularly of its female members. In fact all of these books were co-authored by her sister Elizabeth , who, however, preferred that their books should appear in Agnes's name alone. AS also wrote poetry, songs, children's books, and novels.
Works by other Strickland sisters, notably Catharine Parr Traill , are frequently misattributed to AS by library catalogues.
Photograph of a painting of Agnes Strickland by John Hayes, 1846. She is seated with her elbow resting on a wooden table. She is wearing a black velvet dress that laces at the front, over a cream coloured shirt that is trimmed with ruffles. Her sleeves are trimmed with cream coloured lace and pearls, and she is wearing a matching pearl bracelet. Her dark hair is curly, and partly pulled back. She holds a small paper scroll with early-period writing on it, and perhaps a seal. National Portrait Gallery.

Milestones

19 August 1796
AS was born on the Kentish outskirts of London, the second surviving (though she called herself the third) in a family which grew to comprise six sisters and two brothers.
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Pope-Hennessy, Una. Agnes Strickland: Biographer of the Queens of England. Chatto and Windus, 1940.
19
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Early 1840-1848
The most famous of AS 's works appeared in twelve successive volumes: Lives of the Queens of England, from the Norman Conquest, co-written with her sister Elizabeth but bearing her name alone. The first volume was published by 12 February 1840.
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870.
642 (12 February 1840): 123-5
13 July 1874
AS died some time after suffering a fall and a stroke; her sister Elizabeth survived until the following year.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Pope-Hennessy, Una. Agnes Strickland: Biographer of the Queens of England. Chatto and Windus, 1940.
310

Biography

Birth and Family

19 August 1796
AS was born on the Kentish outskirts of London, the second surviving (though she called herself the third) in a family which grew to comprise six sisters and two brothers.
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Pope-Hennessy, Una. Agnes Strickland: Biographer of the Queens of England. Chatto and Windus, 1940.
19
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

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