Harriet Downing

Harriet Bourne Downing Oliver (1778 – 18 March 1845) was a British poet and novelist.

Life
Harriet Bourne was baptized at All Hallows' Church, Tottenham on 12 August 1778. She was the daughter of John Bourne and Frances Shuttleworth. In 1803 she married George William Downing, a vintner who wrote stage comedies and pamphlets on parliamentary reform. They had five children.

George Downing died around 1820 on a trip to the Cape of Good Hope. In 1829, she married her second husband, Charles Martin Oliver, a merchant.

Rembrandt Peale painted her portrait, dating it "London 1834". John Quincy Adams recorded seeing the portrait in his diary, in Washington, DC in December 1833.

Harriet Downing died of a stroke on 18 March 1845 in Chipping Norton.

Writing
Downing published all of her works under the name Harriet Downing, including after her second marriage. She published two books of poetry by subscription, Mary; or, Female Friendship (1816) and The Child of the Tempest (1821). The former tells the story of an orphan, Mary, while the latter is a collection of romantic poetry.

Two dramatic poems followed: The Bride of Sicily (1830) and Satan In Love (1840). The heroine of each converts a Moor and Satan, respectively.

In 1836 she began publishing her series of prose vignettes, Remembrances of a Monthly Nurse, in Fraser's Magazine. The narrator, a widow from a respectable family, works as a monthly nurse and travels from family to family, frankly discussing issues like social class, murder, and suicide. They were collected posthumously in book form in 1852.

She published a children's book, How Fanny Teachers Her Children, and Odds and Ends (1836). She also contributed to publications including Forget-Me-Not and ''Bentley's Miscellany. ''