Eliza Fenwick

Eliza Fenwick (née Jaco; 1 February 1767 – 8 December 1840) was a Cornish^[1][2] author, whose works include Secresy; or The Ruin on the Rock (1795) and several children's books. She was born in Cornwall, married an alcoholic, and had two children by him. She left him and eventually went to live with her children in Barbados, where she ran a school with her daughter.^[1]

Eliza Fenwick
Cover of the 1808 edition of Mary and Her Cat
Born	Eliza Jaco (1767-02-01)1 February 1767 Pelynt, Cornwall, England
Died	8 December 1840(1840-12-08) (aged 73) Providence, Rhode Island, United States
Pen name	E.F. A Woman Rev. David Blair
Occupation	writer
Notable works	Secresy; or The Ruin on the Rock (1795) Mary and Her Cat (1804) Visits to the Junior Library (1805)
Spouse	John Fenwick
Children	Eliza Anne Rutherford Orlando Fenwick

Biography

Eliza Jaco was born on 1 February 1767 at Pelynt, Cornwall. Her parents were Peter and Elizabeth Jaco (née Hawkswotorth), and she was baptized Elizabeth on 25 June 1766. She married in the 1780s the writer John Fenwick, who became an alcoholic and fell in debt.^[3] They had two children, Eliza and Orlando. She took up tasks such as working as a governess to make family ends meet, but eventually left Fenwick and moved to Ireland as a governess in 1807.^[4]

By this time, Fenwick's daughter had moved to the West Indies to be an actress, and married William Rutherford, by whom she had four children. Fenwick and her son, Orlando, joined her daughter in Barbados in 1814, but Orlando died of yellow fever in 1816. In 1819, Fenwick's son-in-law left the family, leaving the mother and daughter to bring up the four children. The pair ran a secondary school, which provided income and ensured the children's own education. Fenwick owned several enslaved people who worked in the school and her household.^[5]

Fenwick's daughter died in 1828, leaving her to raise the children alone.^[3] By 1835 she was living in the United states and she died in 1840 in Providence, Rhode Island.^[6]

Writing

Throughout her life Fenwick corresponded with friends who included Mary Hays, Thomas Holcroft, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Turner Smith, and Charles and Mary Lamb. Much of the correspondence survives. Her epistolary novel Secresy; or The Ruin on the Rock was published as "By a Woman" in 1795. Her subsequent works were written for children, sometimes under the pseudonym Rev. David Blair.^[4] Mary and Her Cat (1804) was advertised as being "in words not exceeding two syllables".^[1] Visits to the Junior Library (1805, facsimile 1977) tells of a ghastly West Indian family with a slave nurse being "reclaimed by discovering the joys of learning."^[7]

References

1. Jarndyce Booksellers' catalogue Women Writers 1795–1927 Part I: A–F (London, Summer 2017).
2. MacKenzie, Charlotte (2020). Women writers and Georgian Cornwall. ISBN 978-1716339226.
3. O'Callaghan, Evelyn (2004). "Black and white women". Women Writing the West Indies, 1804–1939: 'A Hot Place, Belonging To Us'. Routledge. p. 44. ISBN 9781134440962.
4. Brooke, Marilyn L. (2004). "Fenwick [née Jago], Eliza [pseud. Revd David Blair] (c. 1766–1840), writer". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/37413. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
5. Racine, Karen; Mamigonian, Beatriz G., eds. (2010). The Human Tradition in the Atlantic World, 1500–1850. The Human Tradition around the World. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 192–193. ISBN 9781442206991.
6. "Eliza Fenwick". Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present. Cambridge University. Retrieved 18 September 2022.
7. Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy (eds): The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 365.

Further reading

• Paul, Lissa (2019). Eliza Fenwick: Early Modern Feminist. Newark: University of Delaware Press. ISBN 978-1-64453-009-2.

External links

• Cornwall portal

• Works by Eliza Fenwick at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Eliza Fenwick at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by or about Eliza Fenwick at the Internet Archive