Mary Chandler (1) (1687–1745)

Mary Chandler was born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, the eldest daughter of Henry Chandler, a Dissenting minister. In childhood, she developed a serious curvative of the spine that affected her health. In about 1705, she went to live in Bath, and wrote poems and rhyming riddles to friends that became so much in demand that she published them in A Description of Bath (1733). It quickly went through several editions and was reprinted in 1736, 1738, and 1741. A sixth edition in 1744 appeared with a new a subtitle, "To which is added a True Tale, by the same Author" about a proposal of marriage she had received (but refused). Her brother Dr. Samuel Chandler wrote her biography that appeared in Theophilus Cibber's Lives of the Poets.