— The Corvey Poets Project at the University of Nebraska —

British Poetry of the later Eighteenth and Earlier Nineteenth Centuries

Bibliographical and Contextual Apparatus

[Grimstone, Mary Lemon],  pseud. “Oscar”

Biographical Information

The only biographical information I have been able to find was a rather sketchy, truncated article at the AustLit Agent website (http://www.austlit.edu). The site explains that the author was born about 1800 in Hamburg, Germany. "the daughter of a Suffolk-born lawyer and writer, Leman Thomas Rede. Grimstone was born in Hamburg, as her father had left England to escape his creditors. In 1810, when Grimstone was 10 years old, her father died and she returned with her mother and siblings to England. Grimstone left London in 1826, and spent the following three year in Van Diemen's Land to improve her health". 3 The site further noted that she had died in England in 1866.

From these small pieces of information, it would seem that Mrs. Grimstone did not come from an affluent background, so it might be surmised that she obtained her education through self-effort, and/or self-teaching. Because of that sense of lack in her educational background, overcompensation would perhaps explain her often excessive allusion to the classics and her apparently great need to show her knowledge of literature and history. Or perhaps she had a benefactor who helped her in her quest for education and literary foundation, which might explain her frequent dedications and acknowledgments to her friend, (and perhaps, benefactor), "Isabel". If such things were truly the case, and she was as earnest as she may have been amateurish, then her contemporary critics may have been too harsh on our lady, Mrs. Grimstone.

Prepared by Joan V. Ray, University of Nebraska, December 2004   
      ©Joan V. Ray, 2004.