Amelia Opie

Amelia Opie, née Alderson (12 November 1769 – 2 December 1853), was an English author who published numerous novels in the Romantic period up to 1828. Opie was also a leading abolitionist in Norwich, England. Hers was the first of 187,000 names presented to the British Parliament on a petition from women to stop slavery.

Amelia Opie
A 1798 portrait of Amelia Opie by her husband, John Opie
Born
Amelia Alderson

12 November 1769
Norwich, England, United Kingdom
Died2 December 1853(1853-12-02) (aged 84)
Norwich, England, United Kingdom
Resting placeGildencroft Quaker Cemetery, Norwich
Occupation18th century novelist and poet
Spouse(s)John Opie (1798–1807; his death)

Early life and influences

Amelia Alderson was born 12 November 1769. An only child, she was the daughter of James Alderson, a physician, and Amelia Briggs of Norwich.[1] Her mother also brought her up to care for those who came from less privileged backgrounds.[1] After her mother's death on 31 December 1784, she became her father's housekeeper and hostess, remaining very close to him until his death in 1807.[2]

According to her biographer, Opie "was vivacious, attractive, interested in fine clothes, educated in genteel accomplishments, and had several admirers."(3) She was a cousin of the judge, Edward Hall Alderson, with whom she corresponded throughout her life, and was also a cousin of the artist, Henry Perronet Briggs. Alderson inherited radical principles and was an ardent admirer of John Horne Tooke. She was close to activists John Philip Kemble, Sarah Siddons, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.[3]

Career
Amelia Opie by David d'Angers (1836).

Opie spent her youth writing poetry and plays and organizing amateur theatricals.[1] She wrote The Dangers of Coquetry when she was 18 years old.

Opie completed a novel in 1801 titled Father and Daughter. Characterized as showing genuine fancy and pathos,[3] the novel is about misled virtue and family reconciliation. After it came out, Opie began to publish regularly. Her volume of Poems, published in 1802, went through six editions. Encouraged by her husband to continue writing, she published Adeline Mowbray (1804), an exploration of women's education, marriage, and the abolition of slavery. This novel in particular is noted for engaging the history of Opie's former friend Mary Wollstonecraft, whose relationship with the American Gilbert Imlay outside of marriage caused some scandal, as did her later marriage to the philosopher William Godwin. Godwin had previously argued against marriage as an institution by which women were owned as property, but when Wollstonecraft became pregnant, they married despite his prior beliefs. In the novel, Adeline becomes involved with a philosopher early on, who takes a firm stand against marriage, only to be convinced to marry a West Indian landowner against her better judgement. The novel also engages abolitionist sentiment, in the story of a mixed-race woman and her family, whom Adeline saves from poverty at some expense to herself.

More novels followed: Simple Tales (1806), Temper (1812), Tales of Real Life (1813), Valentine's Eve (1816), Tales of the Heart (1818), and Madeline (1822). The Warrior's Return and other poems was published in 1808.[4]

1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention.[5] Move cursor to identify delegates – the female delegates are on the right.

In 1825, Opie joined the Society of Friends, due to the influence of Joseph John Gurney and his sisters, who were long-time friends and neighbours in Norwich,[3] and despite the objections made by her recently deceased father. The rest of her life was spent mostly in travel and working with charities. In the meantime, however, she published an anti-slavery poem titled, The Black Man's Lament in 1826 and a volume of devotional poems, Lays for the Dead in 1834.[6] Opie worked with Anna Gurney to create a Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in Norwich.[7] This anti-slavery society organised a petition of 187,000 names that was presented to parliament. The first two names on the petition were Amelia Opie and Priscilla Buxton.[8] Opie went to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840 where she was one of the few women included in the commemorative painting.

Personal life

In 1798, she married John Opie, a painter. The couple spent nine years happily married, although her husband did not share her love of society. She divided her time between London and Norwich. She was a friend of writers Walter Scott, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Germaine de Staël. Even late in life, Opie maintained connections with writers, for instance receiving George Borrow as a guest. After a visit to Cromer, a seaside resort on the North Norfolk coast, she caught a chill and retired to her bedroom. A year later on 2 December 1853, she died at Norwich and was said to have retained her vivacity to the last. She was buried at the Gildencroft Quaker Cemetery, Norwich.

A somewhat sanitised biography of Opie, entitled A Life, by Cecilia Lucy Brightwell, was published in 1854.

Selected works
Novels and stories
Biographies
  • Memoir of John Opie 1809
  • Sketch of Mrs. Roberts 1814
Illustration from the poetry book: The Black Man's Lament, Or, How to Make Sugar by Amelia Opie (London, 1826)
Poetry
  • Maid of Corinth 1801
  • Elegy to the Memory of the Duke of Bedford 1802
  • Poems 1802
  • Lines to General Kosciusko 1803
  • Song to Stella 1803
  • The Warrior's Return and other poems 1808
  • The Black Man's Lament 1826 (Wikisource text)
  • Lays for the Dead 1834
Miscellaneous
  • Recollections of Days in Holland 1840
  • Recollections of a Visit to Paris in 1802 1831–1832
  • Winter's Beautiful Rose, a song with words by Opie and music by Jane Bianchi dedicated to the Viscountesses Hampden[9]

References
  1. "Amelia Opie". Spartacus Educational. Retrieved 8 May 2019.
  2. Tong, Joanne (Winter 2004). "The Return of the Prodigal Daughter: Finding the Family in Amelia Opie's Novels". Studies in the Novel. 36:4 (4): 465–483. JSTOR 29533647.
  3.  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Opie, Amelia". Encyclopædia Britannica. 20 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 129.
  4. Armstrong, I, Bristow, J, et al (eds). Nineteenth-Century Women Poets. Oxford University Press. 1996.
  5. Anti-Slavery Society Convention, 1840, Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1841, National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG599, Given by British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1880
  6. Armstrong, Bristow et al
  7. Women's Anti-Slavery Associations, Spartacus, Retrieved 30 July 2015
  8. Genius of Universal Emancipation. B. Lundy. 1833. p. 174.
  9. "Winter's beautiful rose / the words by Mrs. Opie ; the music composed... by Mrs. Bianchi Lacy". HathiTrust. Retrieved 30 November 2020.

Further reading
  • Brightwell, Cecilia Lucy (1855). Memoir of Amelia Opie. London: The Religious Tract Society; 244 pages — abridgment of Memorials
  • Eberle, Roxanne (1994). "Amelia Opie's 'Adeline Mowbray': Diverting the Libertine Gaze; Or, The Vindication of a Fallen Woman". Studies in the Novel. 26 (2): 121–52.
  • Howard, Carol (1998). "'The Story of the Pineapple': Sentimental Abolitionism and Moral Motherhood in Amelia Opie's Adeline Mowbray". Studies in the Novel. 30: 355–76.
  • Susan K. Howard, "Amelia Opie", British Romantic Novelists, 1789–1832. Ed. Bradford K. Mudge. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992
  • Kelly, Gary (1980). "Discharging Debts: The Moral Economy of Amelia Opie's Fiction". The Wordsworth Circle. 11 (4): 198–203. doi:10.1086/TWC24040631. S2CID 165211713.
  • Gary Kelly, English Fiction of the Romantic Period, 1789–1830. London: Longman, 1989
  • Shelley King and John B. Pierce, "Introduction", The Father and Daughter with Dangers of Coquetry. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2003
  • James R. Simmons, Jr, "Amelia Opie". British Short-Fiction Writers, 1800–1880, ed. John R. Greenfield. Detroit: Gale Research, 1996
  • Dale Spender, Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers Before Jane Austen. London: Pandora, 1986
  • William St. Clair, The Godwins and Shelleys: The Biography of a Family. London: Faber and Faber, 1989
  • Kunitz, Stanley (1936). British Authors of the Nineteenth Century. New York: H. W. Wilson Co.
  • Susan Staves, "British Seduced Maidens", Eighteenth-Century Studies 12 (1980–81): 109–134
  • Eleanor Ty, Empowering the Feminine: The Narratives of Mary Robinson, Jane West, and Amelia Opie, 1796–1812. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998
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