Dorothea Primrose Campbell (1792–1863)

Dorothea Primrose Campbell was born in the Shetland Islands off the north coast of Scotland. She began writing in childhood and composed her poem "Address to the Evening Star" in about 1803. After the death of her father, a surgeon, when she was 16, the family was impoverished, and she turned to writing to help support herself, her mother and siblings. In 1811, she published the first collection of her work, Poems, by subscription. She also started a small school in Lerwick. Although it failed, she went on teaching and writing. She produced one novel, Harley Radington: A Tale (1821), and a revised and expanded version of Poems (1816). She was a member of the literary circle of the Ladies' Monthly Museum magazine, using a pseudonym to publish 58 poems and tales. In 1841, she moved to England to take up a position as a governess, but her employers went bankrupt. Finding it impossible to get another job in England, she applied for help to the Royal Literary Fund, which paid her 30 pounds, and she later found a job teaching at Sevenoaks. She died in the Aged Governesses' Asylum in Kentish Town, northwest London.