Isabel Hill

Isabel Hill (1800 – 1842) was a British playwright, poet and translator.

Life
Hill went to live with her brother, Benson, in 1820 and this was a life-long friendship. They had lived together before for several months in 1817 in Dover. Their parents were Isabel (born Savage) and William Hill. Her brother's god parent was William Benson Earle who had also employed her paternal grandfather. Benson Earle Hill was one of her three elder brothers and she had been born in 1800 in Bristol.

Her and Benson's home was in Woolwich where he was in the army. She suffered all her life with tubercolosis. She knew that she could get work acting or teaching but she was determined to be a writer. She had written poetry as a child and she liked languages. She regretted that her school had not taught her Greek or Latin. Her first published poem had been in 1818.

In 1820 she had a success when her five act tragedy, "The Poet's Child" was published. Covent Garden had rejected the verse drama but the play sold well. The London Magazine gave the book a good review and her poetry was favourably compared with that of Felicia Hemans.

In 1822 they began to travel in England and Scotland as her brother had become an actor, but she continued to write. In 1822 she published "Constance" and in 1823 she published her poem Zaphna, or, The Amulet. She had dealt with the publishers via W. G. Graham and he swindled her out of the profits.

Hill wrote another five-act tragedy which was praised by W. C. Macready and Charles Kemble, however Brian, the Probationer, Or, The Red Hand was rejected by Covent Garden and it was not published until after she had died.

Her major work of translation was Corinne, or Italy which she translated in six weeks in the 1830s. Her translation of Germaine de Staël's novel was the most well read and was still being reprinted forty years later.

Between 1827 and 1834 she and her brother lived at Cecil Street, Strand before they moved to Brompton. Isabel died in Brompton in 1842.