Opie, Amelia

(1769-1853)

   She was the daughter of James Alderson, a respected physician of Norwich, Norfolk, whose wife died in 1784. In 1798 she married the painter John Opie (1761-1807), who greatly encouraged her in her writing; her novel Father and Daughter was published in 1801. She was satirized by the novelist Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) as Miss Poppyseed in Headlong Hall (1816) as one who could never stop compounding novels. When her husband died she returned and lived with her father in Norwich until he died in 1825. Brought up a Unitarian, she became a Quaker in 1825 and gave up writing novels. She was buried in the same grave as her father, in the Friends' burying ground at Norwich. Some of her poetry publications: Eleg y to the Memory of the Late Duke of Bedford, 1802. The Warrior's Return, 1808. Poems, 1811 (6th edition). The Black Man's Lament, 1826. Lays for the Dead, 1840. Some of her poems: "Address of a Felon to His Child on the Morning of His Execution," "Fatherless Fanny," "Symptoms of Love," "The Despairing Wanderer," "The Negro Boy's Tale," "To the Glow-Worm."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Poems of Amelia Alderson Opie. T.N. Longman, 1802. Romanticism. Duncan Wu, ed. Blackwell, 1994. Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (http://library.stanford.edu). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.