Amelia Opie
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Amelia Opie (November 12, 1769 - December 2, 1853), English author, daughter of James Alderson, a physician in Norwich, and was born there.
Miss Alderson had inherited radical principles and was an ardent admirer of John Horne Tooke. She was intimate with John Philip Kemble, Sarah Siddons, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. In 1798 she married John Opie, the painter. The nine years of her married life were very happy, although her husband did not share her love of society. He encouraged her to write, and in 1801 she produced a novel entitled Father and Daughter, which showed genuine fancy and pathos.
She published a volume of graceful verse in 1802; Adeline Mowbray followed in 1804, Simple Tales in 1806, Temper in 1812, Tales of Real Life in 1813, Valentine's Eve in 1816, Tales of the Heart in 1818, and Madeline in 1822.
Opie wrote The dangers of Coquetry when aged 18 and married John Opie in 1798. Her novel Father and Daughter (1801) is about misled virtue and family reconciliation. Encouraged by Mary Wollstonecraft she wrote Adeline Mowbray (1804) an exploration of relationship between mother and daughter. Adeline Mowbray discusses in an un-self-conscious and frank manner and delivers the moral that the desires of women as much as men can override their families' wishes and thus jeopardise their future. Most of Amelia Opie's life was divided between London and Norwich. She was a friend of Sir Walter Scott, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Madame de Stael.
At length, in 1825, through the influence of Joseph John Gurney, she joined the Society of Friends, and beyond a volume entitled Detraction Displayed, and contributions to periodicals, she wrote nothing more. The rest of her life was spent in travelling and in the exercise of charity.
Late in her life she received George Borrow as a guest. After a visit to Cromer, a seaside resort on the North Norfolk coast, she caught a chill, retired to her bedroom and died a year later.
Mrs Opie retained her vivacity to the last, dying at Norwich on the 2nd of December 1853. She is buried at the Gildencroft Quaker Cemetery, Norwich.
A Life, by Miss CL Brightwell, was published in 1854.
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
