Ann Yearsley

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Ann Yearsley (born Ann Cromartie; 8 July 1753 – 6 May 1806) was an English poet from Bristol. She came from the laboring class and worked as a milkwoman in her youth. She learned to write with help from her brother. In 1774 she married John Yearsley.

Around 1784 the family was rescued from poverty by Hannah More and other supporters. Yearsley was nicknamed Lactilla by Horace Walpole and became known as the “poetic milkwoman of Bristol.” She read works like Paradise Lost and Night Thoughts, which influenced her poetry.

More helped Yearsley publish Poems, on Several Occasions (1785), but their friendship ended after a dispute over profits from the poetry trust. With support from Frederick Hervey, the 4th Earl of Bristol, Yearsley published Poems, on Various Subjects in 1787. In 1788 she wrote A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave-Trade, a work that drew attention to slavery and sparked comparisons with Hannah More’s Slavery: A Poem.

Yearsley also tried drama and fiction. She wrote Earl Goodwin: an Historical Play (performed in 1789, printed in 1791) and The Royal Captives: a Fragment of Secret History (1795). Her final poetry collection was The Rural Lyre (1796).

Robert Southey wrote a biography of Yearsley in 1831, noting her strong voice and her limited schooling but rich imagination. He described how her style borrowed from the little she had read, including Shakespeare, Paradise Lost, and Night Thoughts.

Politically, Yearsley campaigned against the Bristol slave trade, though other views were described as conservative. Her husband died in 1803, and she died in 1806 in Melksham, Wiltshire. She is buried in Clifton, Bristol.

Ann Yearsley’s life shows how a working-class woman could become a respected poet through help from patrons and her own determination.