Ann Doherty (c. 1786 – c. 1831/1832) was an English novelist and playwright, who corresponded with

Robert Southey Robert Southey ( or ; 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, and Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death. Like the other Lake Poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey began as a ra ...

. Her father, Thomas Holmes (1751–1827), was a wealthy

East India East India is a region of India consisting of the Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal and also the union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The region roughly corresponds to the historical region of Magadh ...

merchant from

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see H ...

, who changed his name to Hunter on inheriting an estate, Gobions in

North Mymms North Mymms is a civil parish in the English county of Hertfordshire. At the 2011 Census the civil parish had a population of 8,921. The village itself is an enclosure. North Mymms Park and Brookmans Park enclose large areas of the parish. Even t ...

, Hertfordshire, through his wife, the daughter of the Governor of Bombay, William Hornby.Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy, eds: ''The Feminist Companion to Literature in English'' (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 301.Romantic Circles: "Attersoll, Ann...
Retrieved 11 November 2017.
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Relationships

Ann Holmes, said to have "a very superior intellect" and much wealth as a child, wrote at the age of 15 a number of excited love letters and verses to Hugh Doherty, an Irish ex-dragoon, who was twice her age when they married. However, she left him and their baby in 1806, after which Hugh Doherty published a book entitled ''The Discovery'', which included her letters and related that they had eloped after Ann's parents had confined her in a private madhouse. In 1811, Hugh Doherty brought a successful action against the architect Philip William Wyatt (died 1835) for "criminal conversation" with his wife, but received only £1000 in damages, not the £20,000 he had claimed. Her relationship with Wyatt was over by 1818, when she was calling herself Ann Attersoll, presumably referring to cohabitation with the wealthy merchant and banker John Attersoll (c. 1784–1822), who had briefly been a Whig MP for Wootton Bassett in 1812–1813. By 1820, Ann Doherty was living under the name St Anne Holmes in France, where she remained.

Writings

As an author, Ann Doherty published anonymously or as "St Anne". Her novels "tended towards an Ossianic, flowery style" with heroines of "a high degree of feminine softness". They included ''Ronaldsha'' (1808), ''The Castles of Wolfnorth and Mont Eagle'' (1812) and ''The Knight of the Glen. An Irish Romance'' (1815). While with Attersoll, she began corresponding with the

Lake Poet The Lake Poets were a group of English poets who all lived in the Lake District of England, United Kingdom, in the first half of the nineteenth century. As a group, they followed no single "school" of thought or literary practice then known. They ...

. In 1818 she sent him a copy of her '' Peter the Cruel King of Castile and Leon: An Historical Play in Five Acts''. He responded with a dedicated copy of the 1821 French translation of his ''

Roderick the Last of the Goths ''Roderick the Last of the Goths'' is an 1814 epic poem composed by Robert Southey. The origins of the poem lie in Southey's wanting to write a poem describing Spain and the story of Rodrigo. Originally entitled "Pelayo, the Restorer of Spain ...

''.A copy of Southey's warm letter of late July 1819 appears on Romantic Circles: "Attersoll, Ann..."
Retrieved 11 November 2017.
He mentioned her appreciatively in a further three letters to third parties: "Attersoll, Ann...
Retrieved 11 November 2017.
/ref>

References

External sites

Corvey Women Writers on the Web author page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Doherty, Ann 19th-century English novelists 19th-century British women writers Pseudonymous women writers Writers from Hertfordshire People from Hertfordshire (before 1965) Robert Southey 1780s births 1830s deaths 18th-century pseudonymous writers 19th-century pseudonymous writers