Ann Jebb political reformer and radical writer, was born at Ripton-Kings, Huntingdonshire, to Lady Dorothy Sherard and the Revd James Torkington. She grew up in Huntingdonshire and was probably educated at home. She married religious and political reformer John Jebb in 1764 and fully shared his ideals. When they were first married he was lecturing at Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

, and she developed a reputation in university circles. Anne Plumptre

Anne Plumptre

Anne Plumptre was an English writer and translator.She was born in Norwich. She and her sister, Annabella [Bell] Plumptre , daughters of Robert Plumptre, became active in the Enfield circle, a local group of literati. Later she became involved in politics during the period of the French Revolution...

 was among her friends. Her writing often took the form of letters, signed with the nom de plume "Priscilla", such as the series she wrote to the London Chronicle

London Chronicle

The London Chronicle was an early family newspaper of Georgian London. It appeared three times a week and contained world and national news, and coverage of artistic, literary, and theatrical events in the capital....

(1772–4) during the movement of 1771 to abolish university and clerical subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles

Thirty-Nine Articles

The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion are the historically defining statements of doctrines of the Anglican church with respect to the controversies of the English Reformation. First established in 1563, the articles served to define the doctrine of the nascent Church of England as it related to...

. Subsequently, in 1775, John Jebb resigned his church living, with the full support of Ann; John studied medicine; and the couple moved to London where they were involved with a number of reformist causes such as the expansion of the franchise, opposition to the war with America

American Revolutionary War

The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...

, support for the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, abolitionism

Abolitionism

Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...

, and an end to legal discrimination against Roman Catholics. After she was widowed in 1786 she remained in London and continued to be politically active. Never robust, she died in 1812 and was buried with her husband.

Her writing appeared in the London Chronicle, the Whitehall Evening Post

Whitehall Evening Post

The Whitehall Evening Post was a London newspaper, founded in 1718.It was started in September 1718 by Daniel Defoe; and was then published on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Defoe left it in June 1720, but it continued to exist until the end of the century. It closed in 1801, with issue...

and the Monthly Repository

Monthly Repository

The Monthly Repository was a British monthly Unitarian periodical which ran between 1806 and 1838.The Monthly Repository was established when Robert Aspland bought William Vidler's Universal Theological Magazine and changed the name to the Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature...

, as well as in pamphlets and tracts. Often attacked for her politics, she has the distinction of having been mentioned by Richard Polwhele

Richard Polwhele

Richard Polwhele was a Cornish clergyman, poet and topographer.-Biography:Born at Truro, Cornwall, Polwhele met literary luminaries Catharine Macaulay and Hannah More at an early age. He was educated at Truro Grammar School, where he precociously published The Fate of Llewellyn...

 in The Unsex'd Females

The Unsex'd Females

The Unsex'd Females, a Poem , by Richard Polwhele, is a polemical intervention into the public debates over the role of women at the end of the 18th century. The poem is primarily concerned with what Polwhele characterizes as the encroachment of radical French political and philosophical ideas into...

.

Resources

• Blain, Virginia, et al., eds. "Jebb, Ann." The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1990. 572.
• Gascoigne, John. “Jebb, John (1736–1786).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oct. 2005. 7 May 2007.
• Hole, Robert. “Hallifax, Samuel (1733–1790).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 7 May 2007.
• Page, Anthony. John Jebb and the Enlightenment Origins of British Radicalism. Praeger Publishers, 2003. ISBN 0-275-97775-7

External links