Mary Wilkinson Priestley

BRP 's great-grandfather, her mother's grandfather, was the famous Radical and Unitarian scientist Joseph Priestley , sometimes referred to as the father of modern chemistry.He and his wife, Mary Wilkinson Priestley

Her close friends at this period included Mary and Joseph Priestley and a number of young women of her own age. She was particularly attracted by a pair of sisters who got themselves barred from...

ALB 's niece wrote of her (with an echo of Pope on himself) that while yet a child, she was surprised to find herself a poet. She herself, however, said it was Joseph Priestley

Anna Aikin (later ALB ) wrote On Mrs P— 's Leaving Warrington, one of her earliest important surviving poems, which she threw into the carriage that was to carry the Priestleys away to Joseph

Most of ALB 's manuscripts perished in the bombing of London in September 1940. This followed on earlier calamities: the destruction of her juvenile poems (in an album kept by Mary Priestley ) in the...