Biography

The eldest daughter of Charles Raymond of Valentines

Valentines Mansion

Valentines Mansion is situated in Valentines Park in Ilford, London Borough of Redbridge. Built in 1696 for Lady Tillotson, the widow of the Archbishop of Canterbury, it was a family house until Sarah Ingleby, its last inhabitant, died on 3 January 1906. It became the property of Ilford...

, Essex

Essex

Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

, she was born about 1750. On 13 April 1773 she married William Burrell

William Burrell

Sir William Burrell was a Glaswegian shipping merchant and philanthropist. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1861. He was the third of nine children in a family, which ran a shipping business....

, member of parliament for Haslemere

Haslemere (UK Parliament constituency)

Haslemere was a parliamentary borough in Surrey, which elected two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons from 1584 until 1832, when the borough was abolished by the Great Reform Act.-1584-1640:-1640-1832:Notes- References :...

 and came into possession, it is said, of 100,000 pounds, then an exorbitant amount of money. A baronetcy was granted to her father in 1774, the year after her marriage, with remainder to her husband and her male issue by him. From 1773 to 1782 Lady Burrell's pen was employed on vers de société

Vers de société

Vers de société, a term for social or familiar poetry, which was originally borrowed from the French, and has now come to rank as an English expression.-In France:...

, varied by such heavier matter as Comala, from Ossian

Ossian

Ossian is the narrator and supposed author of a cycle of poems which the Scottish poet James Macpherson claimed to have translated from ancient sources in the Scots Gaelic. He is based on Oisín, son of Finn or Fionn mac Cumhaill, anglicised to Finn McCool, a character from Irish mythology...

, in 1784. In 1787 her husband's health failed, and they retired to a seat at Deepdene. Lady Burrell published two volumes of collected poems in 1793, the Thymriad from Xenophon, and Telemachus. In 1796 William Burrell died, with Lady Burrell having had two sons and two daughters by him. On 23 May 1797 she remarried at Marylebone Church to the Reverend William Clay, a son of Richard Augustus Clay of Southwell

Southwell

Southwell may mean the following towns in England:* Southwell, Dorset* Southwell, Nottinghamshire**Southwell Minster, historic cathedral**Southwell Racecourse, horse racing venue located near Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire...

, Nottinghamshire

Nottinghamshire

Nottinghamshire is a county in the East Midlands of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west...

. In 1800 Lady Burrell produced two tragedies. The first was Maximian, dedicated to William Lock

William Lock

William Lock was Mayor of Nelson from 1913 to 1915 and again from 1921 to 1927. Lock was an auctioneer, and a grain and produce merchant for 40 years. During his term as Mayor, HMS New Zealand visited Nelson in 1913...

; the second was Theodora, dedicated by permission to Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire

Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire

Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire , formerly Lady Georgiana Spencer, was the first wife of the 5th Duke of Devonshire, and mother of the 6th Duke of Devonshire. Her father, the 1st Earl Spencer, was a great-grandson of the 1st Duke of Marlborough. Her niece was Lady Caroline Lamb...

. Lady Burrell and William Clay retired to West Cowes, Isle of Wight

Isle of Wight

The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...

, where she died on 20 June 1802, aged about 52.

In 1814 Lady Burrell's tragedy Theodora was reprinted in The New British Theatre (vol. i.), a collection of rejected dramas.