Fanny Blood
Frances "Fanny" Blood (1758 - November 29, 1785) was an English illustrator and educator, longtime friend of Mary Wollstonecraft.
Early life
Frances "Fanny" Blood was born in 1758, the daughter of Matthew Blood II (1730-1794) and Caroline Roe (c.1730-1805).[1]
Career
Fanny Blood painted some of the plates for the book Flora Londinensis by James Sowerby.[2]
Blood, together with Mary Wollstonecraft and Wollstonecraft's sisters, Eliza and Everina, opened a school first in Islington, which failed soon, and then in Newington Green. The school was combined with a boarding-house for women and their children.[3] When Blood married and left the school, Wollstonecraft left as well to take care of her friend, also the second school failed.[4]
Personal life
Fanny Blood and her brother Lieutenant George Blood (1762-1844) were good friends with Mary Wollstonecraft. They met in 1774 at the house of common friends, the Clares.[2]
On February 24, 1785, Fanny Blood married Hugh Skeys (born ca. 1758), a wine merchant of Dublin. She died in childbirth in Lisbon, Portugal, on November 29, 1785.[1][2]
Wollstonecraft was deeply affected by Blood's death and in part inspired her first novel, Mary: A Fiction (1788).[5] Wollstonecraft named her daughter, Fanny Imlay (1794-1816), after her friend.[2]
References
- ^ a b "Fanny Blood". Retrieved 24 September 2017.
- ^ a b c d "brian blood and the blood family". Retrieved 24 September 2017.
- ^ Kelly, Gary (2016). Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft. Springer. p. 27. Retrieved 24 September 2017.
- ^ Janet, Todd (2002). Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life. Columbia University Press. p. 62. Retrieved 24 September 2017.
- ^ Wardle, Ralph Martin (1951). Mary Wollstonecraft: a critical biography. University of Kansas Press. p. Chapter 2. Retrieved 24 September 2017.