Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Heyrick
-
Standard Name: Heyrick, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Coltman
Married Name: Elizabeth Heyrick
Though, as a woman, she worked behind the scenes (not in parliament but through print and private direct action) EH
of Leicester was a major, under-recognised figure in the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade. Her pamphlet publications address war, cruelty to animals, workers' wages, prison reform, and other social and political topics as well as abolition. Her political thinking on many points startlingly anticipates later socialist positions. She also published lessons for children and a conduct book. The first of these is the genre in which, in the early nineteenth century, her writing career began. Though her sister knew of only sixteen of her pamphlets, the count has since risen steeply. But their unavailability in major reference libraries has hampered recognition of her.
Corfield, Kenneth. “Elizabeth Heyrick: Radical Quaker”. Religion in the Lives of English Women, 1760-1930, edited by Gail Malmgreen, Indiana University Press, pp. 41-67.
LMC
's feminist ideas, though foreshadowed in her adolescent encounter with Milton, were slow to develop. When Frances Wright
visited Boston in summer 1829 and gave a public lecture about women's rights, Child not only...
Publishing
Elizabeth Hands
The advertisement for the book in print, like the pre-notification, was carried by Jopson's Coventry Mercury. The volume was dedicated to the dramatist Bertie Greatheed
. It was issued in two forms: ordinary copies...
Publishing
Catherine Hutton
CH
(now nearly ninety) published in Ainsworth's Magazine her sketch of the Coltman family: that of Elizabeth Heyrick
's mother
.
Beale, Catherine Hutton, editor. Catherine Hutton and Her Friends. Cornish Brothers.
The title-page bore CH
's name, and mentioned her previous novel. This book too is epistolary, dominated more than its precedessor by its heroine. Dorothy Penrose is the mountaineer of the title (the term here...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Catherine Hutton
Of particular value in CH
's letters are her comments on literature. She offered detailed views on (probably) Elizabeth Heyrick
's Exposition, a pamphlet about economics, admiring the language while doubting Heyrick's capacity to...
Textual Production
Amelia Opie
AO
's The Black Man's Lament; or, How to Make Sugar, designed for child readers and published in 1826,
Opie, Amelia. “Introduction”. Adeline Mowbray, edited by Shelley King and John B. Pierce, Oxford University Press, p. i - xxix.
xxxix
has been reprinted in Pickering and Chatto
's 8-volume set Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation...
MMS
published The Re-Captured Negro (now reprinted in Pickering and Chatto
's eight-volume set Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period 1999).
This series unfortunately includes nothing by Eliza Heyrick
or Hannah Kilham
Friends, Associates
Eleanor Sleath
ES
's group of friends included the writer Susanna Watts
(her distant relation), the Reverend John Dudley
(who was suspected of being closer than a friend, and whose wife, Ann
, made trouble for Sleath)...
Aucott, Shirley. Susanna Watts (1768 to 1842): author of Leicester’s first guide, abolitionist and bluestocking. Shirley Aucott.
30
When William Wilberforce
expressed disapproval of ladies' anti-slavery societies, which he said were...
Textual Production
Susanna Watts
SW
wrote a poem, To the Memory of Elizabeth Heyrick, on the death on 18 October 1831 of her close friend (with whose abolitionist writings of 1824 Heyrick's memoirist seems to associate her).
Beale, Catherine Hutton, editor. Catherine Hutton and Her Friends. Cornish Brothers.
216-17, 206
Textual Production
Susanna Watts
Her claim to be acting with two friends may reflect the involvement of the sisters Elizabeth Heyrick
and Mary Ann Coltman
.
Aucott, Shirley. Susanna Watts (1768 to 1842): author of Leicester’s first guide, abolitionist and bluestocking. Shirley Aucott.
26
Cockshaw
, the publisher, took in letters to the editor: that is...
Intertextuality and Influence
Susanna Watts
SW
gives one of her imaginary editors, Philanthropy, a painfully emotional as well as judgemental attitude to slavery. The second number includes Remarks on the Descent of the Africans from Ham, in the form...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Susanna Watts
This includes poems on Elizabeth Heyrick
, William Cowper
, and Sir Walter Scott
, A Prayer: for the Slaves, Delicacy: Inscribed to the Ladies, several of natural description, and yet others on...
Timeline
1824: The Combination Acts of 1799-1800 prohibiting...
National or international item
1824
The Combination Acts of 1799-1800 prohibiting trade unions and strikes were repealed.
8 April 1825: Lucy Townsend hosted a meeting at which the...
1 January 1831: William Lloyd Garrison launched his anti-slavery...
Writing climate item
1 January 1831
William Lloyd Garrison
launched his anti-slaveryjournalThe Liberator with a reference to Elizabeth Heyrick
's doctrine of immediate, not gradual abolition as the only impregnable position to assume.
1 August 1834: The Slavery Abolition Act or Emancipation...
National or international item
1 August 1834
The Slavery Abolition Act or Emancipation Bill came into effect in the British Empire.
Texts
Heyrick, Elizabeth. A Christmas-Box, for the Advocates of Bull-Baiting. 1809.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Appeal to the Hearts and Consciences of British Women. A. Cockshaw, 1828.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Cursory Remarks on the Evil Tendency of Unrestrained Cruelty. Harvey and Darton, 1823.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Exposition of One Principal Cause of the National Distress. Darton, Harvey and Darton, 1817.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Familiar Letters Addressed to Children and Young Persons of the Middle Ranks. Darton, Harvey and Darton, 1811.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Immediate, Not Gradual, Abolition. 1824.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Instructive Hints, in Easy Lessons for Children. Darton and Harvey, 1800.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Instructive Hints, in Easy Lessons for Children. Darton, Harvey and Darton, 1816.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Observations on the Offensive and Injurious Effect of Corporal Punishment. Hatchard and Son; Hurst, Chance, 1827.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. The Warning. Darton and Harvey, 1805.