Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry

Poet and translator, writing in Scots and English. Born in Leith and lived in Edinburgh, spending summers at North Berwick with her family. Educated at Miss Du Plessis’s School, Royal Terrace, Edinburgh. Disabled from childhood due to a spinal disease. Spoke French, Italian, and German. Author of Mara: A Girl’s Story, and Other Poems (1879). The Chambers’s Journal ledger entry, for her poem published on 1 April 1876, gives her name as “Miss Ford” and gives no address (NLS Dep 341/368). She was described as “the late Miss Ford” in the ledger entry for her translation, published on 8 February 1879. Biographical information: Reilly, Mid-Victorian Poetry, p. 168; David Herschell Edwards, Modern Scottish Poets, eighth series, D. H. Edwards, 1885, pp. 131-3. (AC)