Lifespan: c. 1770-1813
Nationality: English
Genres:
Types of Work: Novels, Children's Stories
Contemporaries: Amelia Opie
Other Names:
Style:
Bio:
(Portions of the forward found in her posthumous novel, Duty, as written by Amelia Opie)
"Margaret Roberts was the youngest daughter of a respectable clergyman of the name of Wade, who resided at Boxford in Suffolk; and in the year 1792 she became, after a long and mutual attachment, the wife of the Reverend Richard Roberts, third son of Dr. Roberts, late Provost of Eton. Immediately after their union she went to reside with her husband at the village of Mitcham, in Surry.
Mrs. Roberts had not the happiness of being herself a parent; but the situation which it was her lot to fill, was such as to awaken in her affectionate nature much of that tender anciety of the maternal character as Mr. Roberts had under his tuition seventeen or eighteen boys (chiefly sons of the nobility) from the age of seven to fourteen, over whose health and comfort she watched with tenderness the most endearing. This tenderness was repaid by them by feelings of affectionate gratitude, which survived the presence of the object that called them forth, since many a youth and many a man has continued eager to own, and anxious to return, his obligations to that care which constituted so great a part of the comforts of his childhood.
About eight or nine years ago [about 1809] she was induced to write, and then to publish, a little work called "The Telescope, or Moral Views", for children; which was a promising proof of those talents for that line of writing, which she afterwards displayed in Rose and Emily, a work with her name to it published two years ago [1812].
To have known a woman so amiable and so admirable, will always be amongst the most pleasing recollections of my life, and to have lost her so soon, one of my most lasting regrets.
I have merely to add, that, after and illness of only three weeks duration, and one to all appearance not attended with danger, she sunk unconsciously into the grave, lamented not only by the husband and friend who fondly watched beside her bed of death, but by a far far-spreading circle of friends and acquaintances, over whose prospects the unexpected loss of such a joy-diffusing being cast a thick and sudden darkness, and which must have been felt in order to be conceived.
She was buried in the family-vault at Boxford, by the side of her parents and of her sister, the sister of her virtues and her talents, Louisa Carter, who departed this life on the 23d of November, 1810, whom she survived only to years and ten months. "
Novels:
Rose and Emily (1812)
Duty (1814)