Agnes C. Hall (née Scott) (1777–1846) was a Scottish writer of novels and non-fiction articles, and also a translator. She used the pseudonym Rosalia St Clair.[1]

Life edit

Born in Roxburghshire, she was the wife of Dr. Robert Hall who died in 1824. She survived him, dying in London on 1 December 1846.[2] Her time in the literary world brought her in particular the acquaintance of John Stuart Mill; but her financial difficulties were serious, and she applied in particular to the Royal Literary Fund.[3]

Works edit

Hall was a contributor on literary and scientific topics to Olinthus Gregory's Pantologia, William Nicholson's British Encyclopedia, and Rees's Cyclopædia; also to John Aikin's Old Monthly, and Knight's Printing Machine. She wrote the notes to Anton Zacharias Helms's Buenos Ayres (1806). During her later years she contributed to the Annual Biography, the Westminster Review, and Fraser's Magazine.[2]

In fiction, she published Rural Recreations; Obstinacy (1826), a tale for young people; First and Last Years of Wedded Life, a story of Irish life in the reign of George IV; and a historical novel based on the massacre of Glencoe.[2]

Hall translated the Travels of F. R. J. De Pons (1807), Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent, Michel Ange Bernard de Mangourit (Travels in Hanover), Aubin-Louis Millin de Grandmaison and François Pouqueville (1813), Goldberry and Michaux. Other translations included Vittorio Alfieri's Autobiography (1810), Madame de Genlis's historical romance La Duchesse de La Vallière (1804), and some other works by the same writer, and some of the tales of August Heinrich Lafontaine.[2]

Notes edit

  1. ^ Loughlin-Chow, M. Clare. "Hall, Agnes C.". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11939. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ a b c d Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney, eds. (1890). "Hall, Agnes C." . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 24. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  3. ^ Patrick Leary, "Fraser's Magazine" and the Literary Life, 1830-1847, Victorian Periodicals Review Vol. 27, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), pp. 105-126, at p. 120. Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20082761

External links edit

Attribution

  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainStephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney, eds. (1890). "Hall, Agnes C.". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 24. London: Smith, Elder & Co.