Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Anna Eliza Bray
-
Standard Name: Bray, Anna Eliza
Birth Name: Anna Eliza Kempe
Married Name: Anna Eliza Stothard
Married Name: Anna Eliza Bray
Nickname: Eliza
Used Form: Mrs Bray
Used Form: Mrs Charles Stothard
Used Form: the author of De Foix
AEB
first reached print with a collection of letters, the first of two which appeared over the course of her career. During fifty-four years, she published twelve novels, and twelve historical and biographical works. She edited several posthumous works by others and also produced writing for children. Many of her works were inspired by historical events or figures as well as by English folklore and legend. Some of her novels proved controversial for alleged anti-Catholicism at a time of fierce debate over Catholic Emancipation; much of her fiction and history focuses on Protestant resistance to religious oppression. A popular success during the mid-Victorian period, AEB
has of late received little critical attention.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
Anna Eliza Bray
first noticed MMC
sometime in or just before 1827, when she spotted her in Tavistock church: a young woman, of the humbler class, dressed exceedingly neat, and remarkable on account of the...
Friends, Associates
Caroline Bowles
CB
's dealings with Blackwood's led to a positive working relationship with editor John Wilson
. She also maintained a long correspondence with Anna Eliza Bray
and (in later years) a shorter one with poet...
Although William Wordsworth
can be regarded as mediator between Kate Southey
and CB
, he was convinced that Bowles was at fault. The entire Wordsworth clan, and Sara Coleridge
, allied themselves with Southey's youngest...
Friends, Associates
Robert Southey
Having early in his life admired writers like Mary Wollstonecraft
and Charlotte Smith
, he later numbered women writers such as Anna Eliza Bray
among his close friends.
Family and Intimate relationships
Mary Maria Colling
She died when Mary was five years old, bringing her granddaughter a great early sorrow.
Bray, Anna Eliza, and Mary Maria Colling. “Letters to Robert Southey”. Fables and Other Pieces in Verse by M.M. Colling, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, pp. 1-85.
22, 36-7
MMC
never saw her grandmother's birth-name written and so its correct spelling is unknown. Anna Eliza Bray
speculates...
Family and Intimate relationships
Caroline Bowles
Bowles cared devotedly for her husband during their few years together. She assumed he suffered from opium disease