Mary Collyer (c. 1716 – 1762) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 translator and novelist.

Mary Collyer was part of the John "Bankes" pedigree which can be viewed at Geoff's Genealogy. She married Joseph Collyer the elder (1714/15–1776), a writer and bookseller; their son, Joseph Collyer the younger

Joseph Collyer

Joseph Collyer , also called Joseph Collyer the Younger, was an English engraver; associate of the Royal Academy and portrait engraver to the British Queen Consort, Queen Charlotte.-Life and work:...

, was an engraver, and illustrated one edition of his mother's translation Death of Abel.

Works

• The Virtuous Orphan (1743), a translation of La vie de Marianne by Marivaux
  Pierre de Marivaux
  Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux , commonly referred to as Marivaux, was a French novelist and dramatist....
  
  
• Memoirs of the Countess de Bressol … from the French (2 vols., 1743)
• Felicia to Charlotte: being letters from a young lady in the country, to her friend in town. Containing a series of most interesting Events, interspersed with Moral Reflections; chiefly tending to prove, that the Seeds of Virtue are implanted in the Mind of Every Reasonable Being. (1744–9, in 2 vols). Collyer's own novel
• The Christmas Box (1748–9)
• Death of Abel (1761), a translation of Solomon Gessner
  Solomon Gessner
  Solomon Gessner was a Swiss painter and poet. His writing suited the taste of his time, though by some more recent standards it is “insipidly sweet and monotonously melodious.” As a painter, he represented the conventional classical landscape.-Biography:He was born in Zürich...
  
  's Der Tod Abels (1758)
• The Messiah (2 vols., 1763), a translation of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
  Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
  Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock was a German poet.-Biography:Klopstock was born at Quedlinburg, the eldest son of a lawyer.Both in his birthplace and on the estate of Friedeburg on the Saale, which his father later rented, young Klopstock passed a happy childhood; and more attention having been given...
  
  's Der Messias. Completed and published by Collyyer's husband.

Further reading

• Katherine Sobba Green, The Courtship Novel, 1740-1820: A Feminized Genre. 1991.

External links

• Joyce Fullard, ‘Collyer , Mary (1716/17–1762)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 13 Nov 2006