Jane Warton

Jane Warton (bap. 1724 – 3 November 1809) published poetry, essays, conduct literature, and a novel, and was a member of a prominent literary family. Life Jane Warton was the daughter of Thomas (1688–1745) and Elizabeth (1691–1762) Warton. She was baptized in 1724 in Basingstoke, Hampshire, where her father was vicar and master of the grammar school. She was one of three children: she had an elder brother, Joseph (1722–1800), and a younger, Thomas (1728–1790). The family was intellectual, literary, and educated: Thomas Warton Sr. was the second professor of poetry at Oxford, though it seems to have been a political appointment, and both sons, after their own Oxford educations, went on to become respected "men of letters." Warton's literary ambitions were encouraged within the family, and while she published anonymously, her identity was not hidden. By the age of eighteen, Warton contracted what was likely rheumatic fever, with life-long consequences to her health. In 1753 she took a position as governess to the Misses Thoyts, Joan (b. 1747) and Mary Anne (b. 1749), of Whitechapel and Carshalton. Her first major publication, Letters Addressed to Two Young Married Ladies, on the Most Interesting Subjects (1784) was addressed to the sisters and she maintained a lifelong connection to them.