User:HorseFang/Ellin Devis

Ellin Devis (December 1746 - February 1820) (also known as Eilen Devis or Ellin Davis ), was a schoolmistress and author of The Accidence (1775), a popular eighteenth-century grammar. She came from an artistic family - her father Arthur was known for his "conversation pieces," her brother Arthur for historical portraits, and Thomas Anthony Devis for landscape paintings.

According to Carol Percy, The Accidence “seems to have been the first English grammar directed exclusively to a female audience.” Despite being written for girls, Devis’s grammar was recommended by her peers as a general introduction to Robert Lowth’s Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762).

Devis taught at several schools in fashionable areas of London, and her pupils include Maria Edgeworth, Frances Burney (later novelist Madame d'Arblay) and her sister Susannah, Hester Thrale and later her daughter Cecilia Piozzi. While Devis was mistress of the Queen’s Square school in Bloomsbury, England, it was known as “the Young Ladies Eton.” At the time of her death in 1820, Devis, due to her unique teaching style, she had had financial success and owned the school.

Family
Ellin Devis was the daughter of Arthur Devis (1712-1787) and Elizabeth Faulkner (1723-1788), who had a total of twenty-two children, sixteen of whom did not survive their infancy. The surviving six children included Ellin Devis, Frances Devis (1751-17?), Thomas Anthony Devis (1756-1810), Arthur William Devis (1762-1822), Elizabeth Devis (1764-1825), and Ann Devis (1766-1822).