Author: Opie, Amelia (1769-1853)
Title: Poems.
Date: 1802
Biographical Information
Amelia Opie was born November 2, 1769 in Norwich, Norfolk, England, and died December 2, 1853 at Norwich. Born as Amelia Alderson, Amelia Opie knew the joys of life and love through her father, who Women Writers: Their Works and Ways quotes Mr. James Alderson in referring to his daughter’s birth as “the happiest day of my life” (176).
Close proximity to her father may have been the inspiration for one of her more famous works, The Father and Daughter, originally a volume of poems which later inspired a novel. Amelia Opie’s poems in these volumes portray the changing relationship of a father and daughter as the daughter is seduced. Whether her own father became mad, as the father figure in the volume did, is unknown, but Amelia Opie soon married John Opie in 1798. The year of her marriage was only three years prior to the publication The Father and Daughter.
As a child, Amelia Opie was not prone to strict education or rules; she became the head of her household at the age of 15 as her mother, Amelia Briggs Alderson, passed early in Opie’s life. Due to her many domestic responsibilities, she learned to appreciate the minute details of life, such as “’gazing on the bright and blue sky as I lay in my little bed before the hour of rising came, and listening with delighted attention to the ringing of the peal of bells. I had heard that heaven was beyond those blue skies…and I fancied that those sweet bells were ringing in heaven’” (195).
Under the influence of her parents, both members of the Unitarian community and activists for the less fortunate, Amelia Opie adopted a life of social activism for the poor and for the antislavery movement. Activism may have been Opie’s calling, as many of her poems in Poems, such as “The Negro Boy’s Tale” and “Lines Written at Norwich” not only confront political injustices, but also constitute a call-to-action by the supposedly “Christian” character of England. This is evident in “The Negro Boy’s Tale” where the main character, a slave, confronts society: “But, if dey preach and practise too, A negro slave me should not be.”
Through her activism and writing, Opie associated with and met with many intellectuals including Mary Wollstonecraft, John Horne Tooke and William Godwin. This group included political figures as well as writers.
Through her life, Opie attended trials and anti-slavery conventions as well as becoming involved in active female societies in her community. Each group pushed the societal standards for women, and Opie was by no means the “normal” conventional woman when it came to acting as a “proper” woman of society. Her life as a self-driven woman loved by her husband and family is evident in her poetry. Mr. Opie, a famous painter, was smitten by the youthfulness of mind and body of Amelia Opie and encouraged her writing. Amelia states that “our only quarrel was not that I wrote too much, but that I did not write more and better” (Women Writers: Their Works and Ways, 180).
However, John Opie unfortunately passed in 1807, but Amelia Opie continued to write and continued to produce many more volumes, novels and poems after his death. Her love for writing continued on into her elderly age, and her stance in society continued to be one of a light-hearted, beautiful woman. Edward Fitzball commented that Opie “was worshipped in society, not only for her great talent and her polished manners, but for her peculiar beauty’” (Spartacus education). Amelia Opie was no woman to be ignored, either in her writing or in her social presence. One of the most influential writers of the 19th century, she was revered for her kindness as well as her bold character to elicit thought as well as change, as can be seen in her later works on subjects ranging from family to children’s tales and love. Despite the differing subjects, Amelia Opie continued to write with passion and a sense of kinship with nature, people and subjects, until her death in her hometown, where she had returned to care for her father.
Amelia Opie’s writing and passions continued to foster important conversations through a literary spirit that lives on today.
Sources:
Hamilton, Catherine Jane. Women Writers: Their Works and Ways. Ward, Lock, Bowden & Co., 1892.
Simkin, John. “Amelia Opie.” Spartacus Educational, Spartacus Educational, Jan. 2017, spartacus-educational.com/Amelia_Opie.htm.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Amelia Opie.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 29 Aug. 2017, www.britannica.com/biography/Amelia-Opie.
“Amelia Opie.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/amelia-opie.
Prepared by Emily Metzger, University of Nebraska, Spring 2018
© Emily Metzger, 2018