Matilda Betham

Mary Matilda Betham (1776-1852) was an English poet, biographer, and portrait.

Life
She was the daughter of William Betham. In London, Betham gave public Shakespeare readings and exhibited her portraits at the Royal Academy. She published A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country in 1804. Her best work in poetry is Lay of Marie (1816), based upon the story of Marie de France. Betham was a close friend of Robert Southey and his wife, Anna Laetitia Barbauld and her husband, and Charles and Mary Lamb and an acquaintance of John Opie, Frances Holcroft, Hannah More, Germaine de Staël, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Some of Betham's letters along with a biographical sketch are in the book Six Life Stories of Famous Women (1880) by her niece Matilda Betham-Edwards.

Poetry
Sonnets and Verses, to Relations and Their Connexions. (circa 1836).
 * Elegies and other small poems. 1797
 * Poems. 1808,
 * The Lay of Marie. 1816.
 * Vignettes in Verse. 1818.

Prose

 * A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country. 1804.
 * Challenge to Women, Being an Intended Address from Ladies of Different Parts of the Kingdom, Collectively to Caroline, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. 1821.
 * Crow-quill Flights (memoir). 1840.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.