Barbara Hofland
BiographyBarbara Hofland (1770–November 4, 1844) was an English writer of some 66 didactic, moral stories for children, schoolbooks, and poetry.
Born Barbara Wreaks or Wreakes, her father Robert Wreakes was a Sheffield manufacturer who died when she was three. She was raised by a maiden aunt in Dinnington where she was briefly educated at the village’s dame school. She began writing for the local paper and started a milliner’s shop, but she sold it when she married the businessman Thomas Bradshawe Hoole in 1796. She was widowed two years later with an infant son. She went to live with her mother-in-law in Attercliffe and supported herself partly from generous subscriptions given for a book of her poetry. Then in 1809 she opened a girls’ boarding school at Grove House, Harrogate, and developed it as a ladies’ finishing school, a forerunner to what is now Harrogate College, but she kept it only until 1811 when she moved to London. In 1810 she married the landscape artist Thomas Christopher Hofland (1777–1843). Although her new husband had a good local reputation and had exhibited at the Royal Academy, his wife’s writings were to remain the main source of family income thoughout their marriage.
During her writing life Hofland became a friend of the architect John Soane, who asked her to provide a description of his museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and of the writers Maria Edgeworth and Mary Russell Mitford. Her first story, The History of an Officer’s Widow (1809), earned her £6 from John Harris, a London publisher. One of her many popular books (as Mrs. Hofland) was The Blind Farmer and His Children (1816). Her most popular children’s book was The Son of a Genius, about an impulsive artist, which may contain autobiographical elements. It had been reprinted at least 14 times in England by 1841 as well as nine times in America, and in translations into French and other languages. She also wrote geographical and topographical books for teaching purposes, and a longer work in verse: A Season at Harrogate (1812).
Bibliography (wildly incomplete)
The History of an Officer’s Widow (story, 1809)
The Son of a Genius (1812)
A Season at Harrogate (verse, 1812)
The Blind Farmer and His Children (1816)
Tales of the Priory (1820)
Tales of the Manor (1822)
Self-Denial (1827)
The Young Crusoe (1828)
The Young Cadet (1836)
Other links
Royal Academy of Arts
Wikipedia