Ellin Devis
| Ellin Devis | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 1746 United Kingdom |
| Died | February 1820 |
| Nationality | English |
| Occupation |
Educator Writer |
Ellin Devis (December 1746 - February 1820) was a schoolmistress and author of The Accidence (1775), a popular eighteenth-century grammar. Devis was the daughter of artist Arthur Devis and sister of artist Arthur William Devis.[1]
According to Carol Percy, The Accidence “seems to have been the first English grammar directed exclusively to a female audience.”[2] Despite being written for girls, Devis’s grammar was recommended by her peers as a general introduction to Robert Lowth’s Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762).[3]
Devis taught at several schools in fashionable areas of London, and her pupils include Maria Edgeworth, Frances and Susannah Burney, Hester Lynch Piozzi and later Piozzi’s daughter Cecilia. While Devis was mistress of the Queen’s Square school it was known as “the Young Ladies Eton.”[4]
References
- ↑ Paviere, Sydney H. (1950). The Devis Family of Painters. Leigh-on-Sea: Lewis.
- ↑ Percy, Carol (1994). "Paradigms for their Sex? Women's Grammars in Late Eighteenth-Century England". Histoire Epistemologie Langage 16: 123.
- ↑ By a Society of Gentlemen (1775). "Review of Devis". The Critical Review: or, Annals of Literature. the thirty-ninth.
- ↑ Cajka, Karen (2003). The Forgotten Women Grammarians of Eighteenth-Century England. University of Connecticut.
|