Mary Chandler was an English poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

. George Crabb

George Crabb (writer)

-Life:He was born 8 December 1778 at Palgrave, Suffolk. He was educated at a school at Diss and under a private tutor. He began as a medical student, but became assistant to a bookseller...

 writes that she left several poems, ‘the most esteemed of which was her “Bath”’.

Life

Born at Malmesbury

Malmesbury

Malmesbury is a market town and civil parish located in the southern Cotswolds in the county of Wiltshire, England. Historically Malmesbury was a centre for learning and home to Malmesbury Abbey...

, Wiltshire

Wiltshire

Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...

, she was the eldest daughter of Henry Chandler, a dissenting minister, later at Bath, Somerset. Her mother was a Miss Bridgman of Marlborough, and Samuel Chandler

Samuel Chandler

Samuel Chandler was an English Nonconformist minister.-Life:He was born at Hungerford in Berkshire, where his father was a minister. He was sent to school at Gloucester, where he began a lifelong friendship with Bishop Butler and Archbishop Secker; and he afterwards studied at Leiden...

 was one of her brothers. In her youth her spine

Vertebral column

In human anatomy, the vertebral column is a column usually consisting of 24 articulating vertebrae, and 9 fused vertebrae in the sacrum and the coccyx. It is situated in the dorsal aspect of the torso, separated by intervertebral discs...

 became crooked, and her health suffered; but she set up a shop in Bath about 1705, when not yet out of her teens, and wrote rhyming riddles and poems to friends. The neighbouring gentry had her to visit them, among them Mrs. Boteler, Mrs. Moor, Lady Russell, and the Duchess of Somerset. Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...

's friend Mary Barber

Mary Barber

Mary Barber , poet, was a member of Swift's circle.- Life :Barber's parents are unknown; she married Rupert Barber , a Dublin woollen draper, and had nine children, four of whom survived to adulthood...

 was her neighbour, and she was also a friend of Elizabeth Rowe

Elizabeth Rowe

-Life:She was the eldest daughter of Elizabeth Portnell and Walter Singer, a dissenting minister. Born in Ilchester, Somerset, England, she began writing at the age of twelve and when she was nineteen, began a correspondence with John Dunton, bookseller and founder of the Athenian Society.Between...

. She died on 11 September 1745.

Works

She printed a book of verses inscribed to Princess Amelia. It was called A Description of Bath, and, going quickly through two editions, a third was issued in 1736, a fourth in 1738, and a fifth in 1741. A wealthy gentleman, of sixty, struck with one of her poems, travelled eighty miles to see her, and, after buying a pair of gloves from her, offered to make her his wife. Miss Chandler turned the incident into verse, and a sixth edition of her book being called for in 1744, it appeared with a sub-title, ‘To which is added a True Tale, by the same Author.’ She retired from business; and she began a poem ‘On the Attributes of God,’ left unfinished.

A seventh edition of her poems was issued in 1755, and an eighth in 1767. She dedicated her book to her brother John, and her ‘Life,’ in Theophilus Cibber

Theophilus Cibber

Theophilus Cibber was an English actor, playwright, author, and son of the actor-manager Colley Cibber.He began acting at an early age, and followed his father into theatrical management. In 1727, Alexander Pope satirized Theophilus Cibber in his Dunciad as a youth who "thrusts his person full...

's Lives of the Poets, was written by her brother Samuel.