Jones, Mary

(1707-1778)

   The second of four children of Oliver Jones, barrel maker of St. Aldates, Oxford, she was an accomplished linguist. It is thought that she was a governess and that this brought her into friendship with Martha, daughter of John Lovelace, fourth Baron of Hurley. Martha was maid of honor to Queen Caroline and later housekeeper of Windsor Castle. Mary visited Martha and her husband, Lord Henry Beauclerk (they married in 1739), at their home in Windsor Forest, Berkshire. Her ballad "The Lass of the Hill" was published in 1742, and in 1750 her Miscellanies in Prose and Verse was published by subscription in Oxford. Many of her poems were published in the London Magazine, and "her gentle satires on the lot of talented women, who lacked means, are among the most accomplished poems written by women in the eighteenth century" (DNB). She lived all of her life in Oxford and was postmistress when she died. Some of her other poems: "After the Small Pox," "An Epistle to Lady Bowyer," "Epistle from Fern Hill," "Soliloquy on an Empty Purse," "Stella's Epitaph."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Eighteenth Century Women Poets: An Oxford Antholog y. Roger Lonsdale, ed. Oxford University Press, 1989. Poetry by English Women: Elizabethan to Victorian, R.E. Pritchard, ed. Continuum, 1990. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers. org).