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Ann Yearsley, née Cromartie (8 July 1753 – 6 May 1806), was an English poet and writer from a lowly social background in Bristol. The poet Robert Southey wrote a biography of her.

Early Life and Career
Yearsley was born in Bristol to labouring-class parents, John and Anne Cromartie, in 1753, being baptised in St Andrew's Church in Clifton. Anne worked as a milkwoman, and her daughter followed her into the trade. She received no formal education, but was taught to read and write by her mother and her older brother, William, and acquired some familiarity with literature through books which her mother was lent by her employer, and by looking at prints of scenes from classical mythology in shop windows.

In 1774, she married John Yearsley, a yeoman, with whom she had five sons and two daughters. By 1784, her husband has lost his status as a yeoman, and the family had entered a condition of extreme poverty from which they were rescued initially by a stranger, one Mr Vaughan; Yearsley's mother died from the effects of starvation not long afterwards.

Patronage
Later in 1784, the writer and philanthropist Hannah More heard about the Yearsleys' destitution and about Ann Yearsley's early poems. She decided to become Yearsley's patron, and gave her modest financial support as well as access to a range of literature designed to educate her in More's view of the best poetic style. She used her extensive wealthy and literary contacts to raise a large subscription for Yearsley, which enabled the publication of Yearsley's first collection, Poems, on Several Occaisions, in June 1785, which was positively recieved.

More was a committed social conservative and opposed the principle of social mobility; she wished to prevent Yearsley from following the career trajectory of Stephen Duck, another poet from a labouring class background who 50 years prior had, through his work, been able to raise himself to a wealthy and respectable property-owner. Consequently, her intention in getting Yearsley published was primarily that the proceeds would enable her to return to her duty as a labouring-class wife and mother without the threat of poverty. As she wrote in 1784, "it is not intended to place her in such a state of independence as might seduce her to devote her time to the idleness of Poetry... lest it should unsettle the sobriety of her mind, and, by exciting her vanity, indispose her for the laborious employments of her humble condition.”

To this end, More compelled Yearsley to sign an agreement whereby the proceeds from her book would enter a trust under the control of More and her friends, from which she would grant Yearsley a modest allowance.

Personal life
Born in Bristol to John and Anne Cromartie, Ann worked in childhood as a milkwoman, like her mother. She received no formal education, but her brother taught her to write. She married John Yearsley, a yeoman, in 1774. A decade later the family was rescued from destitution by the charity of Hannah More and others.

Yearsley was among the noted Bristol women to campaign against the Bristol slave trade. In other respects her politics have been described as conservative.

Yearsley's husband died in 1803. She died in 1806 at Melksham near Trowbridge, Wiltshire. Her grave can be found in Birdcage Walk, Clifton, Bristol.

Writings
Hannah More called her first encounter with Yearsley positive, saying her writing "excited [her] attention" as it "breathed the genuine spirit of poetry, and [was] rendered still more interesting by a certain natural and strong expression of misery that seemed to fill the head and mind of the author." More organized subscriptions for Yearsley to publish Poems, on Several Occasions (1785), but its success led to a quarrel between them over access to the trust in which its profits were held. Yearsley included her account of the quarrel in an "autobiographical narrative" appended to a fourth, 1786 edition of the poems.

Now supported by Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol, Yearsley published Poems, on Various Subjects in 1787. A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave-Trade appeared in 1788. The latter was seen by many critics to rival a similar poem by her ex-patron Hannah More, entitled "Slavery: A Poem".

Yearsley then turned to drama, with Earl Goodwin: an Historical Play (performed in 1789; printed in 1791) and to fiction, with The Royal Captives: a Fragment of Secret History, Copied from an Old Manuscript (1795). Her final poetry collection, The Rural Lyre, appeared in 1796.

Southey's biography
Robert Southey wrote a biography of Ann Yearsley in 1831, calling it an "introductory essay on the lives and works of our uneducated poets". It describes the first encounter that Hannah More had with Ann Yearsley and her general impressions of her capacity as a writer and poet.

As Southey notes, Yearsley based her style, grammar and spelling on the limited amounts of literature she had read, which included some Shakespeare plays, Paradise Lost, and Night-Thoughts. More describes Yearsley as not even having seen a dictionary or knowing anything of grammatical rules, and being bound to "ignorant and vulgar" syntax, yet using language full of metaphor, imagery and personification. More described herself as striving to save Yearsley from the vanity of fame, and was more concerned about providing food for her than making her known. Their eventual disagreement over money left the two estranged. According to the critic Jonathan Rose, More was repeatedly startled when the milkmaid drew on classical sources for a work. Plebeian poets were usually confined to a ghetto of folk poetry in a period of strong class prejudice.

Southey described Yearsley as a writer "gifted with voice", yet she "had no strain of her own whereby to be remembered." He also stated that for a time before her death she was reported to be deranged, though there is no corroboration of this.

Works

 * Poems, on Several Occasions (1st edition, with a preface by Hannah More, 1785) (Etexts)
 * Poems, on Several Occasions (4th edition, with a new preface by Yearsley, 1786)
 * Poems, on Various Subjects (1787)
 * A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave Trade (1788) (Etext)
 * Stanzas of Woe (1790)
 * Earl Godwin: An Historical Play (performed 1789; printed 1791)
 * The Royal Captives: a Fragment of Secret History, Copied from an Old Manuscript (4 vols., 1795)
 * The Rural Lyre: a Volume of Poems (1796)