Wakefield, Priscilla (1751–1832)

English writer of children's books . Born Priscilla Bell on January 31, 1751, in Tottenham, England; died on September 12, 1832, in Ipswich, England; daughter of Daniel Bell of Stamford, Middlesex, and Catherine Barclay (both Quakers); aunt of prison reformer Elizabeth Fry; grandmother of politician Edward Gibbon Wakefield and colonist William Hayward Wakefield; married Edward Wakefield (a merchant), in 1771 (died 1826); children: one daughter; two sons (who became well-known economists).

Selected writings:

Leisure Hours; or Entertaining Dialogues (1794–96); An Introduction to Botany in a Series of Familiar Letters (1796); Juvenile Anecdotes founded on Facts (2 vols., 1795–98); Reflections on the Present Condition of the Female Sex, with Suggestions for its Improvement (1798); The Juvenile Travelers (1801); A Family Tour through the British Empire (1804).

Born Priscilla Bell in Tottenham, England, in 1751, Priscilla Wakefield was the daughter of Daniel Bell of Stamford, Middlesex, and Catherine Barclay , the granddaughter of a noted Quaker apologist. Wakefield herself was a member of the Society of Friends throughout her life, although she did not conform to its codes on either dress or amusements. In 1771, she married Edward Wakefield, a London merchant, with whom she had two sons and a daughter. Throughout the 1770s and 1780s, she was engaged in philanthropic activities, creating a charity for lying-in women in Tottenham and promoting "frugality banks," savings banks for women and children, the first of their kind in Great Britain. She started writing only when the family's fortunes began to decline in the 1790s. Her books were chiefly instructive works for children, and she specialized in natural history and travelogues. Several became extremely popular and continued to be reprinted even after her death, including An Introduction to Botany in a Series of Familiar Letters (1796), Juvenile Anecdotes founded on Facts (2 vols., 1795–98), and The Juvenile Travelers (1801), the story of an imaginary tour of Europe, in its 19th edition by 1850.

Other works included Leisure Hours; or Entertaining Dialogues (1794–96) and A Family Tour through the British Empire (1804). Her one work for adults, Reflections on the Present Condition of the Female Sex, with Suggestions for its Improvement (1798), advocated greater educational and vocational opportunities for women, including science, teaching, shop work, portrait painting and farming. Wakefield was the aunt of prison reformer Elizabeth Fry and grandmother of the Radical politician Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the colonist William Hayward Wakefield, who founded the city of Wellington, New Zealand. She died in Ipswich, England, in 1832.

sources:

Concise Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Kunitz, Stanley J., and Howard Haycraft, eds. British Authors of the Nineteenth Century. NY: H.W. Wilson, 1936.

Shattock, Joanne. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Paula Morris , D.Phil., Brooklyn, New York