Mary Locke, later Mary Mister, (1768 – 1816) was an English poet and children's author. She was orphaned as a child and bought up by her educated uncle Edward Taylor in the

Oxfordshire Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily ...

countryside. She published subjective and melancholic verses in the ''Gentleman's Magazine'' from 1791, with twenty items appearing up to 1796. On the death of her uncle in 1797 she appeared to stop writing altogether. She inherited substantial property from him at

Steeple Ashton Steeple Ashton is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, east of Trowbridge. In the north of the parish are the hamlets of Ashton Common and Bullenhill. Name and history Until the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Steeple Ashton w ...

in Wiltshire, and at Middle Barton. In 1808 she married a Welshman, William Mister. She then published under her married name a series of children's books. Mary Mister was long believed to be a separate author until historic research revealed the two to be the same person in 1989.

References

* Lonsdale, Roger (ed) (1990). '' Eighteenth Century Women Poets: An Oxford Anthology''. Oxford University Press. page 460. . * British poets 1768 births 1816 deaths British children's literature British women poets {{England-writer-stub