Anne Penny

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Anne Penny
BornAnne Hughes
(1729-01-06)6 January 1729
Bangor, Wales
Died17 March 1784(1784-03-17) (aged 55)
Bagshot, England
OccupationPoet, translator
Language
  • English
  • Welsh
NationalityBritish
Notable worksAn Invocation to the Genius of Britain
Spouse
  • Thomas Christian (1746–51)
  • Peter Penny (1750s–1779)
ChildrenHugh Cloberry Christian

Anne Penny (née Hughes; 6 January 1729 – 17 March 1784) was a British poet and translator, born in Wales to a vicar and his wife. She married a privateer who owned an estate in Oxford, but was left widowed at the age of 22 with a son, Hugh Cloberry Christian. She then started writing poetry. She married a French customs officer, again with a maritime history, and the couple moved to London. There she published a number of works, including her most significant poem An Invocation to the Genius of Britain, a patriotic piece written at the start of the Anglo-French War. She also published a number of translations of Welsh poems.

Penny was an adherent of Welsh nationalism, and wrote a number of nationalistic poems. Though her work was criticised for its poor grammar, it attracted prominent subscribers, such as Samuel Johnson and Horace Walpole.

Biography[edit]

Penny was born Anne Hughes in Bangor and baptised on 6 January 1729. Her father was Bulkeley Hughes, the vicar of Edern and previously the vicar of Bangor, and her mother was Mary Hughes.[1] She married Thomas Christian in 1746, a privateer captain with a letter of marque. Christian had captured several Spanish galleons,[2][3] allowing him to purchase an estate at Hook Norton in Oxfordshire. In 1747 the couple had a son, Hugh Cloberry Christian, who went on to follow his father's maritime traditions and became a rear admiral in the Royal Navy.[1]

Thomas Christian died in 1751, leaving Penny widowed at the age of twenty-two.[2] She turned to writing and published her first work, Cambridge: a poem in 1756, which she published under the name Ann Christian.[4] She married Peter Penny (or Penné), a French customs officer who had lost his leg whilst in the navy. The couple moved into a house in Bloomsbury Square, where Penny carried on her writing and translating poetry.[1] She learned Welsh as child and it may have been her first language.[5] Peter Penny died around 1779, so Penny published her works to raise money.[1] Anne Penny died in London on 17 March 1784.[6]

Poetry[edit]

Penny's most important poem was An Invocation to the Genius of Britain (1778), written in rhyming couplets and dedicated to the Duchess of Devonshire.[7] Composed at the start of the Anglo-French War, it defends imperialism and glorifies the Royal Navy.[8]

Penny also maintained an interest in Thomas Gray's Celtic work. Her collection Poems, with a Dramatic Entertainment (1771) includes a number of nationalistic poems about Wales, as well as translations of Taliesin's Poem to Prince Elphin and An Elegy on Neest by Evan Evans.[9]

Although Penny's work was criticized for poor grammar, often linked by commentators to her social standing,[10] it was subscribed to by Samuel Johnson, the Duchess of Bedford, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, and Horace Walpole. She was also commissioned to write poems by the Marine Society.[1]

External links[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e "Penny [née Hughes; other married name Christian], Anne (bap. 1729, d. 1780/1784)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/74054. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ a b The 1887 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography mentions that Thomas Christian's great granddaughter wrote an inaccurate account of him, where she claims he was a Captain in the Navy, and that he died in a bar fight in 1753, but he was more likely a privateer. Laughton, J. K. (1887). Christian, SIR Hugh Cloberry (1747–1798),). Oxford University Press.
  3. ^ The Peerage: Captain Thomas Christian
  4. ^ Rogers, Paul Baines, Julian Ferraro, Pat (2011). The Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of eighteenth-century writers and writing, 1660–1789 (1. publ. ed.). Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9781405156691. Archived from the original on 1 June 2016. Retrieved 25 March 2016.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. ^ Summit, Jennifer; Bicks, Caroline, eds. (2010). The history of British women's writing, 1750–1830 (illustrated ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 115. ISBN 9780230550711.
  6. ^ "Deaths". St. James's Chronicle or the British Evening Post. No. 3598. London, England. 27 March 1784. p. 4.
  7. ^ Guest, Harriet (2000). "Chapter 4". Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1750–1810 (Illustrated ed.). University of Chicago Press. pp. 102–103. ISBN 9780226310527. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  8. ^ Aaron, Jane (2010). "Writing Ancient Britain". Nineteenth-Century Women's Writing in Wales: Nation, Gender and Identity (Revised ed.). University of Wales Press. pp. 48–49. ISBN 9780708322871.
  9. ^ Prescott, Sarah (2015). "Place and Publication". In Ingrassia, Catherine (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Women's Writing in Britain, 1660–1789. Cambridge University Press. pp. 65–66. ISBN 9781107013162.
  10. ^ Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid; van der Wurff, Wim (2009). "Periodical reviews and the rise of prescriptivism". Current issues in late modern English (illustrated ed.). Bern: Peter Lang. p. 129. ISBN 9783039116607.
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