Amelia Opie: The Quaker Celebrity

A new biography of Amelia Opie, the poet and novelist (1769 - 1853) - the first since 1937. Her long and interesting life deserves to be retold, with the inclusion of hitherto unpublished material from archive and private sources. Amelia Opie (nee Alderson) was a best-selling novelist who also wrote poems, songs, short stories and works for children. Born in Norwich, she was the daughter of a successful doctor, who also worked gratis at the new hospital 'for the deserving poor' and was well connected with the city's flourishing literary scene. She was married to the artist John Opie, moved easily in literary and artistic circles and had high society friends in England and France. She was a close friend of the Gurneys of Earlham, near Norwich, and was greatly influenced by and involved with their good works - the prison reforms of Elizabeth Fry (nee Gurney) and the anti-slavery campaigning of Hannah Gurney's husband, Thomas Fowell Buxton. Under the influence of Joseph John Gurney, Amelia became a Quaker when she was 55. Flirtatious, fun-loving and lively, Amelia had many important friendships with other men, including William Godwin, Lord Stuart, William Hayley, David d'Angers and her cousin Henry Perronet Briggs R.A. She enjoyed what the plain Quakers condemned as worldly pleasures and her entry into the Society of Friends was incomprehensible to many of her admirers. In later life her writing became more didactic in tone, but she never lost her sense of humour and love of gossip.