Author: BENGER [(Miss Elizbeth)]:
Title: Memoirs of the Life of Anne Boleyn , Queen of Henry VIII.
Description: London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown..., 1821. FIRST EDITION. 2 volumes. 8vo, 178 x 122 mms., pp. vi, 287 [288 colophon]; [iv] [287] - 548, fine engraved frontispiece in volume 1, contemporary half calf, marbled boards, black leather label on volume, volume 2 without leather over spine, but hinges and joints are firm. The historian and novelist Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger (1777–1827) admired the work of the playwright Elizabeth Inchbald and attempt to emulate her work, without much success. Her first publication seems to be a poem on slavery, The Abolition of the Slave Trade, which was published in 1809. Two biographical works followed soon, Memoirs of the Late Mrs Elizabeth Hamilton (1818) and Memoirs of John Tobin (1820). Rosemary Mitchell in her Oxford DNB article says of this work, that "Benger claimed that Boleyn's career 'exemplified the vanity of human ambition' ( preface, iii)—this historical biography is surprisingly critical in approach to its sources; Benger's emphasis on the queen's support of early protestant reformers such as Latimer has been vindicated by later research." She was well-known to her contemporaries as a rather bumptious stalker of famous literary people.

Keywords: Biography History women


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