Methodist poet whose work won the approval of Matthew Arnold. She was born in London on 31 October 1829. Her father came from West Witton in the Yorkshire Dales and had an upholsterer's shop in High Holborn, where she spent her first 18 years. Her mother came from Kent. An older sister died in infancy. The family attended Great Queen Street chapel, where Benjamin Gregory came to know her and recognized her poetic talents. Her schooling in Great Ormond Street was brought to an end by a bout of whooping cough and in 1847 the family moved on health grounds to Margate, where they worshipped at Hawley Square chapel. Between May 1848 and the end of 1849 she suffered a period of depression. She started a small school, but was forced to give it up because of her health. She died on 4 September 1855 while visiting friends at Redbourne near St. Albans and was buried in the graveyard of the Independent Chapel there.
She was well read in theology, including Fletcher's works, in philosophy (e.g. Butler, Locke and the Methodist Samuel Drew) and in the classics. Her letters to Gregory discuss her favourite poets (Scott, Campbell, Moore and the recently discovered Shelley). Her favourite, Wordsworth, was 'like a forest stream, still and deep'; Byron 'more like a troubled mountain cataract'. Among her poems are a description of a visit to Cowper's wilderness at Weston Underwood, an elegy on the death of Dr. J. Beaumont and verses on the Bible translator William Tyndale. She published On the Ocean of Time (1850) and The Dream of Pythagoras and other Poems (1854).