Fanny Blood
Fanny Blood | |
|---|---|
 A Plate from Flora Londinensis | |
| Born | 1758 |
| Died | 29 November, 1785 |
| Nationality | UK |
| Spouse | Hugh Skeys |
Frances "Fanny" Blood (1758 - November 29, 1785) was an English illustrator and educator and 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]
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] As William Godwin wrote, Mary "contracted a friendship so fervent, as for years to have constituted the ruling passion of her mind".[3]
Blood, together with Mary Wollstonecraft and Wollstonecraft's sisters, Eliza and Everina, opened a school first in Islington, which soon failed, and then in Newington Green. The school was combined with a boarding-house for women and their children.[4] On February 24, 1785, Fanny Blood married Hugh Skeys (born ca. 1758), a wine merchant of Dublin. When Blood married and left the school, Wollstonecraft left as well to take care of her friend, also the second school failed.[5]
Blood 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).[6] 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.
- ^ Godwin, 50.
- ^ 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.
Bibliography
- Godwin, William. Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Eds. Pamela Clemit and Gina Luria Walker. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2001. ISBN 1-55111-259-0.