Sarah Dixon

Sarah Dixon (baptised 28 September 1671 – 23 April 1765) was an English poet probably born in Rochester, Kent, where she was baptised.[1] She took to writing "during a Youth of much Leisure", although her earliest surviving dated poem is from 1716. The 500 subscribers to her anonymous Poems on Several Occasions[2] included Elizabeth Carter and Alexander Pope, and the society hostess Maria Coventry, Countess of Coventry.[3][4]

For the boat, see Sarah Dixon (sternwheeler).

Family and work

She was the daughter of James Dixon, barrister at the Middle Temple, and Elizabeth Southouse, and the granddaughter of Prebendary Robertus Dixon (died 1688).[5] She is likely to have spent most of her life at St Stephen's, also known as Hackington, just north of Canterbury, although it has been suggested that the family moved to Newnham, Kent when her father remarried.[6]

Dixon had one brother, who probably died in his late teens. There are indications that she also had a sister. Her niece, Mrs Eliza Bunce (née De Langle), was among her subscribers and added further poems of Dixon's to her copy. Eliza Bunce's husband, Rev. John Bunce (died 1786),[7] Vicar of St Stephen's, encouraged Dixon and corrected her work for publication.[4] Her poem "The Ruins of St. Austin's, Canterbury" (the oldest Christian site in Britain) was written at the age of 73 and appeared posthumously in 1774 in the Kentish Gazette.[3]

Although Dixon is described in one copy of her printed work as a widow, the memorial stone on the chancel floor of St Stephen's calls her only the daughter of James Dixon, barrister. A 1739 poem of hers addresses John and Eliza Bunce on the death of a daughter. One of the verses in her volume is entitled "On the Death of my Dear Brother, Late of University College, Oxford". No husband or children are mentioned.[4]

Opinions

Dixon described her own work as "all artless, uninformed," but she appears to be well read and was versatile. A modern critic calls her "a mordant satirist of both sexes: her love poems... run the gamut from rejoicing to pathos to scoffing."[3] Another notes how "individual poems range from light but pointed satire on the follies and failings of women, through romantic, ballad-like lyrics, to earnest, mature, religious verse."[4] A third comments, "Sarah Dixon, who shows so much insight into matters of the heart, embodies the merits of family loyalty and patriotism."[8]

Death

Sarah Dixon died on 23 April 1765 at the age of 93, according to the St Austin's memorial stone,[4] at the village of Hackington.[1]

References
  1. Orlando, Cambridge Retrieved 14 May 2017.
  2. Canterbury, 1740.
  3. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English, eds Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 299.
  4. Richard Greene, "Dixon, Sarah (1671/2–1765)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, UK: OUP, 2004) Retrieved 14 May 2017.
  5. Find a Grave Retrieved 15 May 2017.
  6. Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology, ed. David Fairer and Christine Gerrard (Chichester, UK: Wiley, 3rd edition, 2015), pp. 318–21.
  7. Deborah Kennedy: Poetic Sisters: Early Eighteenth-century Women Poets (Lewisville: Bucknell UP, 2013), p. 130.
  8. Author Profile: Deborah Kennedy. Bucknell UP Retrieved 15 May 2017.
  • A reproduction of Poems on Several Occasions 1740 appears here: Retrieved 14 May 2017. It was republished in 2002 by Northeastern University Women Writers Project.
  • The text of "The Request of Alexis" Retrieved 14 May 2017
  • The text of "Strephon" ("Ah, Strephon! why was I ordained by fate/To please a swain, so fickle and ingrate?") Retrieved 14 May 2017
  • Further information on Dixon: Ann Messenger, Pastoral Tradition and the Female Talent (New York: AMS Press, 2001)
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