Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Palmer, Alicia Tindal

941004Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 43 — Palmer, Alicia Tindal1895Elizabeth Lee

PALMER, ALICIA TINDAL (fl. 1810), novelist, is described as a native of Bath. Her first book, a novel in three volumes, ‘The Husband and Lover,’ was published in 1809. In the next year appeared ‘The Daughters of Isenberg: a Bavarian Romance,’ in four volumes. It was sharply ridiculed by Gifford in the ‘Quarterly’ (iv. 61–7). Miss Palmer had previously sent him three 1l. notes. Gifford did not return the money, but affected to assume that it was intended for charitable purposes, and wrote to Miss Palmer that, as she had not mentioned the objects of her bounty, he hoped the Lying-in Hospital would not disappoint her expectations (Murray, Memoir and Correspondence, i. 180–1). In 1811 Miss Palmer published a third novel in three volumes, ‘The Sons of Altringham,’ written, so the preface states, to defray the expenses of the admission of a boy to the Deaf and Dumb Asylum. All three books are written in a high-flown and inflated style, and are without literary importance. In 1815 appeared Miss Palmer's ‘Authentic Memoirs of Sobieski.’ Among the subscribers were Lord Byron and Edmund Kean.

[Allibone's Dict. of Engl. Lit. ii. 1492; Biogr. Dict. of Living Authors, 1816.]

E. L.