ELIZABETH COLTMAN HEYRICK

(1769-1831)

Elizabeth Coltman Heyrick grew up in the Great Meeting, Leicester, the daughter of John Coltman of St. Nicholas Street and a good friend of her namesake and fellow writer, Elizabeth Coltman (1761-1838) of the Newarke, Leicester, who also attended the Great Meeting and whose father was also named John Coltman. The Elizabeth Coltman of St. Nicholas Street married John Heyrick in 1789 and after his death a few years later returned to Leicester and eventually became a Quaker. She became widely known in England and America for her abolitionist tracts, among which are Immediate not Gradual Abolition of Slavery; or an Inquiry into the Shortest, Safest, and Most Effectual Means of Getting rid of West Indian Slavery (London, 1824), Letters on the Necessity of a Prompt Extinction of British Colonial Slavery (London, 1828), Appeal to the Hearts and Consciences of British Women (Leicester, 1828), and Apology for Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Associations (London, 1828). For the disentangling of the families, friendships, and publications of the two Elizabeth Coltmans, see Timothy Whelan, “Elizabeth Coltman,” ch. 6 in Other British Voices: Women, Poetry, and Religion 1766-1840 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 155-97; also idem, “Informal Writings and Literary History: The Case of a Provincial Women’s Literary Circle, 1799-1814,” in Informal Romanticism, ed. James Vigus. Studien zur Englischen Romantik, vol, 11 (Trier, Germany: Wissenshaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2012), 173-88.