Mary Dawes Blackett

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Mary Ann Dawes Blackett (active 1786–1791) was an English writer who produced two books of poetry and a book of conduct literature in the late 18th century. Very little is known about her birth. She is believed to have lived in London and to have been married to Thomas Blackett of Bloomsbury, with a daughter named Catherine (born around 1773) who was educated in a convent in Nice. Mary was Protestant, her husband perhaps Catholic, and she seems to have been widowed; she may also have had a brother who died at sea. She died in Vauxhall, south London, and was buried at St. Mary-at-Lambeth on 8 August 1792. She counted poet Thomas Chatterton among her acquaintances.

Blackett published three known works, all self-published. The antichamber; a poem, in three cantos (1786) appeared only in its first canto (158 lines of heroic couplets) and satirized courtiers. Suicide; a poem (1789), 402 lines of heroic couplets, is addressed to Richard Cosway and reflects on suicide as a national concern. It portrays suicide as a “horrid Mania,” critiques the death penalty for desensitizing society to death, describes six suicides, and offers a message of fortitude in adversity. The mointress; or, The economy of female life. In a series of letters (1791) is a conduct-literature work written as letters to her daughter. Blackett’s writings belong to the late 18th-century Romantic milieu.