Julia, or, The Convent of St Claire

Amelia Alderson, an only child, was born on the 12th November 1769 in Norwich, England. After the death of her mother on New Year’s Eve 1784 she became her father's housekeeper and hostess. The young Amelia was energetic, attractive, and an admirer of fashion. She spent much of her youth writing poetry and plays and putting on local amateur theatricals. At 18 she had published anonymously ‘The Dangers of Coquetry’. Amelia married in the spring of 1798 to the artist John Opie at the Church of St Marylebone, in Westminster, and together they lived in Berners Street where Amelia was already living. Her next novel in 1801 ‘Father and Daughter’, was very popular even though it dealt with such themes as illegitimacy, a socially difficult subject for its times. From this point on published works were far more regular. The following year her volume ‘Poems’ appeared and was again very popular. Novels continued to flow and she never once abandoned her social activism and her call for better treatment of women and the dispossessed in her works. She was also keenly involved in a love of society and its attendant frills. Encouraged by her husband to write more she published Adeline Mowbray in 1804, an exploration of women's education, marriage, and the abolition of slavery. Her husband died in 1807 and she paused from writing for a few years before resuming with further novels and poems. Of particular interest was her short poem ‘The Black Man's Lament’ in 1826. Her life now was in the main spent travelling and working for charities and against slavery. She even helped create a Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in Norwich which organised a parliamentary petition of 187,000 names of which hers was the first name. After a visit to Cromer, a seaside resort on the North Norfolk coast, she caught a chill and retired to her bedroom. Amelia Opie died on the 2nd December 1853 in Norwich. She was 84.