Clara Reeve

Clara Reeve (23 January 1729 – 3 December 1807) was an English novelist best known for the Gothic novel The Old English Baron (1778). She also wrote an innovative history of prose fiction, The Progress of Romance (1785). Her first work was a translation from Latin, at the time a language unusual for a woman to learn. She was a near-contemporary of the bluestockings ladies of Elizabeth Montague's circle.

Early life

Clara Reeve was born in Ipswich, one of the eight children of Reverend William Reeve MA, Rector of Freston and of Kirton, Suffolk, and perpetual curate of St Nicholas, Ipswich. Her mother Hannah was the daughter of William Smithies, a goldsmith and jeweller to King George I. Vice-Admiral Samuel Reeve (c. 1733–1803) was her brother.

Reeve described her father and her early life in a letter to a friend: My father was an old Whig; from him I have learned all that I know; he was my oracle; he used to make me read the Parliamentary debates, while he smoked his pipe after supper. I gaped and yawned over them at the time, but, unawares to myself, they fixed my principles once and for all. He made me read Rapin's History of England; the information it gave made amends for its dryness. I read Cato's Letters by Trenchard and Gordon; I read the Greek and Roman histories, and Plutarch's Lives: all these at an age when few people of either sex can read their names.

Career

After the death of her father in 1755, Reeve lived for a time with her mother and sisters in Colchester, where her sister Lucia ran a millinery, before moving into her own house in Ipswich. There her first piece of authorship was a translation from Latin of the historical allegory Argenis by John Barclay, which she entitled The Phoenix (1772). She was saddened by the reception her translation received, later writing, "It was the best book I ever gave to the public, and the worst received."