Amelia Opie (née Alderson)
Contributions
Knows
- Anna Letitia Barbauld poet teacher writer
- Jacques-Louis David artist politician professor revolutionary
- Daniel Isaac Eaton bookseller journalist pamphleteer publisher translator writer
- William Godwin journalist novelist philosopher writer
- Thomas Holcroft journalist novelist playwright poet translator
- John Horne Tooke cleric journalist linguist politician writer
- Elizabeth Inchbald actor playwright translator writer
- Charles Marsh editor jurist politician publisher writer
- Thomas Starling Norgate journalist translator writer
- John Pitchford scientist translator writer
- Anne-Louise-Germaine de Staël-Holstein philosopher salonnière traveller writer
- John Thelwall journalist publisher writer
- Helen Maria Williams novelist poet salonnière translator writer
- Mary Wollstonecraft novelist philosopher translator traveller writer
- A Society of Gentlemen political organisation
Notes
Contributed 15 poems to the Cabinet as 'N'.
Alderson was the daughter of a Dissenting doctor, whose mother had died when she was young, and she spent her youth writing poetry and plays, organizing amateur theatricals and corresponding with Mrs Barbauld, and her father John Aikin, who encouraged her to write.
Alderson's father and his friends were active in the Norwich Dissenting church and reform movements and she soon became part of this radical culture, meeting other reformers in London at Daniel Isaac Eaton's bookshop and William Godwin's home, amongst other places. In 1795, she invited John Thelwall to speak in Norwich.
She was a close friend of another Cabinet contributor, Anne Plumptre, with whom she travelled to France in 1802. Both Holcroft and Godwin proposed to her before she married the painter John Opie in 1798. Her novel 'Adeline Mowbray' was a roman a clef that poked fun at Godwin and Wollstonecraft for their rejection of marriage.