Frances Brooke (1724-1789)

She was born in Lincolnshire and after her parents died young she and her two sisters were raised by uncles and aunts. She started writing poetry and plays in the 1750s, notably under the pseudonym of "Mary Singleton, Spinster". In 1756, she married John Brooke who left for North America the following year as a military chaplain. By 1763, she had made a name for herself as an author and was included in Dr Samuel Johnson's literary circle in London. That year, she joined her husband in Quebec where in 1769 she wrote the first novel to be written in British Canada, The History of Emily Montague. Quebec's Attorney General, Francis Maseres, described her as, “a very sensible agreeable woman, of a very improved understanding and without any pedantry or affectation”. In 1774, Fanny Burney recalled meeting her at Johnson's in London: "Mrs. Brooke is very short and fat, and squints; but has the art of showing agreeable ugliness. She is very well bred, and expresses herself with much modesty upon all subjects; which in an authoress, a woman of known understanding, is extremely pleasing".