Frances Greville



Frances Greville (c 1724-1789) was an Irish poet and celebrity in Georgian England.

Life
She was born in Longford, Ireland in the mid-1720s; by the early 1740s, she was in London, accompanying Sarah Lennox, Duchess of Richmond. Horace Walpole's poem The Beauties (1746) mentions her as among the most prominent women of court.

Frances married Fulke Greville of Wilbury House (Wiltshire) in 1748. Greville was a gambler and a dandy, but that he loved his wife is witnessed by her presence (under the character of "Flora" in his Maxims, Characters, and Reflections (1756). Frances is believed to have contributed to the volume herself.

Frances Greville's own career as an amateur poet was marked by one resounding success: the "Prayer for Indifference." This poem, first published in the Edinburgh Chronicle, offers an attack on the cult of sensibility. It was reprinted regularly in the following decades, often paired with a poem in praise of sensibility. Her output otherwise was light, and mostly within the confines of Vers de société.

She spent the 1760s and 1770s in travel. Her husband was named envoy to Bavaria in 1764. She spent her age in conversation, befriending Charles and Frances Burney, as well as Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who dedicated his The Critic to her.

Her daughter became a prominent Whig hostess. Frances died in 1789.