Surname: Rankin Forename(s): Jessica b. 1818. d. 1891. Nationality: English. VIAF.
Poet and song writer. Born in Pentonville, London. Lived with her mother and step-father
in Versailles, France, from a period from the early 1850s. Wrote the libretto to Michael
William Balfe’s Mazeppa (1862). Emigrated to New Zealand in 1867, where she married Charles Johnson Pharazyn.
Biographical information: Curran Index; BL; Biographical information: Jeremy Parrott, “More Newly Identified Contributors
to Household Words,” Dickens Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 3, September 2018, pp. 189-206 (pp. 200-1). (AC)