Priscilla Wakefield, nee Priscilla Bell (1751–1832) was an English Quaker educational writer and philanthropist.
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Priscilla Bell was born into a family in Tottenham, then a village north of London. Her father was Daniel Bell of Stamford Hill, Middlesex, his wife Catharine was the granddaughter of the Quaker theologian Robert Barclay.[1][2] She married Edward Wakefield (1750–1826), a London merchant, and had three children. Writing to support her family financially, she wrote seventeen books in two decades. She was one of many female English writers at the end of the eighteenth century who began to demand a wider life for women. Charities which she founded included a maternity hospital, a Female Benefit Club, and a Penny Bank for children, which developed into England's first savings bank.[3]
Mrs. Wakefield died at the house of her daughter, Mrs. Head, on Albion Hill, Ipswich, on 12 September 1832, and was buried on 20 December in the Friends' burial-ground at the New Meeting House, Ipswich. A portrait of Mrs. Wakefield and her sister, Mrs. Gurney, painted by Thomas Gainsborough, was exhibited at South Kensington in 1868.[4]
A portrait in lithograph is in the London Friends' Institute. She was a member of the Society of Friends, and conformed to their religious practice, but did not observe their restrictions in regard either to dress or to abstinence from amusements. Mrs. Elizabeth Fry was her niece. She had two sons and a daughter. Two sons were Edward Wakefield (1774-1854) and Daniel Wakefield. The daughter, Isabella (d. 17 Oct. 1841), married Jeremiah Head of Ipswich. Edward Gibbon Wakefield was her grandson.[1]
Mrs. Wakefield was widely known as a writer of children's literature. Her early publication, Juvenile Anecdotes, founded on Facts, was successful, and she went on to publish other books of the same nature, and of a more advanced character, dealing with science and travel.
Wakefield had considerable knowledge of botany and natural history, and in 1796 she published An Introduction to Botany, in a Series of Familiar Letters, London, 12mo, which was translated into French in 1801, and reached an eleventh edition in 1841. It was followed by An Introduction to the Natural History and Classification of Insects, in a Series of Letters, London, 1816, 12mo.