Maria Grace Andrews Saffery (1772-1858) and her sister, Anne (1774-1865), were originally from Shaw, near Newbury, the daughters of James (b. 1746) and Mary Andrews (c. 1748-91). They spent most of their youth at Isleworth, Middlesex, on the outskirts of London, where their mother (and possibly their father) operated a school, at one point assisted by Mary Egerton (c. 1765-1840), who later become the second wife of the biblical commentator and evangelical Anglican minister, Thomas Scott (1747-1821). By the early 1790s they were spending considerable periods of time in Salisbury with their grandparents, reading contemporary literature, writing about radical politics, and experimenting with dissenting religion. Though raised in the Anglican Church, during the first half of the 1790s they began attending the Particular Baptist congregation in Brown Street, spending much time as well in the home of the pastor, John Saffery. On 19 June 1798, Anne Andrews married Philip Whitaker (1766-1847) of Bratton, the nephew of Jane Attwater. On 20 August 1799, Maria married her recently widowed pastor, John Saffery. They had six children, including Philip John Saffery (1800-69), who succeeded his father as minister at Brown Street in Salisbury, later becoming a leading figure within the Baptist denomination, working for the Baptist Missionary Society as well as the Religious Tract Society. Shortly after her marriage, Maria Saffery opened a boarding school for girls and maintained it until 1835, when she retired to live with her daughter, Jane (1805-84), who had married her cousin, Joshua Whitaker (1801-64) of Bratton, that same year.

Maria Saffery began writing poetry from an early age. Her first published poem, Cheyt Sing, was written in 1787, but was not published until 1790; it was dedicated to the Whig politician Charles James Fox. She was also interested in fiction, publishing The Noble Enthusiast, a romance novel (with tinges of the gothic) in 1792. Both works were published anonymously. After that, she primarily published in religious and literary magazines for the next thirty-five years; her only volume of poetry, Poems on Sacred Subjects, appeared in 1834. Among her manuscripts are some eighty unpublished poems, including Lyra Domestica, her unpublished collection of poems and drawings from the early 1830s addressed to family, friends, and a few important literary, religious, and political figures.  Maria Saffery’s published and unpublished poems appear in Volume 5, along with some unpublished poems by Anne Whitaker. The extant portions of Anne Whitaker’s diary (begun in the 1790s and continued into the 1850s) appear in Volume 8. An extensive correspondence of more than two hundred and fifty letters involving both sisters, c. 1790-1840, comprises the contents of Volume 6. Within the correspondence are also letters letters of Philip Whitaker and John Saffery, letters of the two sisters to their children, letters between Maria and Jane Saffery Whitaker, letters to the two sisters and their mother from their friend, Mary Egerton Scott (wife of the Anglican Evangelical divine, Thomas Scott) and letters involving Maria Saffery and parents of her scholars, including a remarkable set of letters to Maria and John Saffery by Richard and Harriet Ryland of London as well as letters from the Revd John Ryland (no relation to Richard Ryland) and his wife, Frances, of Bristol. 

For a lengthy biographical notice of Saffery and her sister, along with her complete surviving poetry and correspondence, most of it previously unpublished, and the text of her novel, The Noble Enthusiast, see Timothy Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, vols 5-7. For a selection of letters between Maria Grace and her sister, Anne Andrews, 1792-96, click here.

Complete Works of Maria Grace Saffery

[A Young Lady of Fifteen.] Cheyt Sing. Printed for the Author; And Sold by J. Woodhouse, No. 10, Brook-Street, Grosvenor-Square; Fuller, Newbury; Collins and Johnson, Salisbury,1790.

[Anonymous.] The Noble Enthusiast; a Modern Romance. In Three Volumes. London:  Printed for William Lane, at the Minerva Press, 1792.

Between 1800 and 1843, 43 poems/hymns appeared in various periodicals in England (many of these poems were reprinted in Poems on Sacred Subject): Evangelical Magazine (4), Biblical Magazine (9), Baptist Annual Register (4), Theological and Biblical Magazine (6), Baptist Magazine (14), A New Selection of Hymns (2), and one in The Juvenile Forget Me Not for 1831, Memoirs of the Late Rev. Joseph Horsey, of Portsea (1803), The London Standard, and Original Hymns, ed. John Leifchild (1843).

1. “On seeing the following Inscription on a Sun-dial: ‘Be gone about your business,’” Evangelical Magazine, 8 (1800), 88.

2. “On the Death of Miss S¾ [Shoveller], at five years of age, who gave remarkable Evidences of a Divine Change,” Baptist Annual Register, 3 (1798-1801 [August 1801]), 551.

3.  “The Wish,” Biblical Magazine, 1 (September 1801), 310-11.

4.  “Conflict,” Biblical Magazine, 1 (September 1801), 311.

5.  “On Peace,” Baptist Annual Register, 4 (1801-02 [November 1801]), 672.

6.  “Mourning an Absent God,” Biblical Magazine 2 (January 1802), 40.

7.   “Evening,” Biblical Magazine, 2 (January 1802), 40.

8.   “New Year’s Gift,” Baptist Annual Register, 4 (1801-02 [January 1802]), 751.

9.    “Pensive Desire,” Biblical Magazine, 2 (November 1802), 440.

10.  “On Ezekial XXXIV,” Baptist Annual Register, 4 (1801-02 [November 1802]), p. 1117.

11.  “Reflections on the New-Year,” Biblical Magazine 3 (January 1803), 40.

12. “On Hearing Bells at Midnight, for the Closing Year,” Biblical Magazine, 3 (January 1803), 40.

13.  “An Elegy,” in Memoirs of the Late Rev. Joseph Horsey, of Portsea, with Mr. Horsey’s Last Farewell Address to this Church, a Short Time Previous to his Decease, ed. John Shoveller (Portsea: Printed and sold by James Horsey. Sold also by Seeley, Williams, and Button, London; James, Bristol; Saffery, Salisbury; and Jolliffe, Crewkerne, 1803), 79-80.

14.  “On Sin,” Biblical Magazine 2 (March 1802), 120.

15.  “Consolation in Christ,” Biblical Magazine 2 (July 1802), 279.

16.  “Happiness of the Righteous after Death,” Evangelical Magazine, 11 (1803), 272.

17.  “Perfect Love,” Theological and Biblical Magazine, 4 (July 1804), 279.

18.  “Sabbath Evening Reflexion,” Theological and Biblical Magazine, 4 (October 1804), 400.

19.  “The Saviour’s Triumph over Death and Hell,” Theological and Biblical Magazine, 5 (October 1805), 400.

20.  “True Liberty,” Theological and Biblical Magazine, 6 (June 1806), 260.

21.  “Nearness to God,” Theological and Biblical Magazine, 6 (June 1806), 260.

22.  “Christian Heroism,” Theological and Biblical Magazine, 7 (May 1807), 200.

23.  “Love to Christ,” Evangelical Magazine, 16 (1808), 452.

24.  “Hymn,” Baptist Magazine, 1 (1809), 120.

25.  “A Mother’s Address to a Child,” Evangelical Magazine, 17 (1809), 567; A New Selection of Hymns (London, 1828), no. 528.

26.  “Ordination Hymn,” Baptist Magazine, 1 (August 1809), 383.

27.  “Association Hymn,” Baptist Magazine, 1 (December 1809), 509-10.

28.  “Introductory Apostrophe, On the Commencement of the second Volume of the Baptist Magazine,” Baptist Magazine, 2 (January 1810), 43-44.

29.  “Jubilee Hymn, Sung at several Baptist Meeting Houses,” Baptist Magazine, 2 (January 1810), 44.

30.  “Sonnet. Addressed to Children in Infancy and Absence, By a Mother,” Baptist Magazine, 2 (October 1810), 540.

31.  “A Funeral Thought,” Baptist Magazine, 3 (January 1811), 43.

32.  “Missionary Hymn,” Baptist Magazine, 3 (September 1811), 396.

33.  “Hymn on Baptism,” Baptist Magazine, 4 (February 1812), 88.

34.  “The Choice of Moses,” Baptist Magazine, 5 (March 1813), 132.

35.  “Missionary Hymn, sung December 8th, 1813, at the Ordination of a Missionary going to Jamaica,” Baptist Magazine, 6 (January 1814), 44.

36.  “Isaiah lx.,” Baptist Magazine, 6 (January 1814), 44.

37.  “Complaint to Java on the Death of the Rev. T. Trowt,” Baptist Magazine, 9 (May 1817), 200.

38.  “A Baptizing Hymn,” A New Selection of Hymns (London, 1828), no. 411.

39.  “Baptizing Hymn,” A New Selection of Hymns (London, 1828), no. 412.

40.  “For the Album of a Very Little Child,” The Juvenile Forget Me Not for 1831, ed. Mrs. S. C. Hall (London: Frederick Westley and A. H. Davis, [1831]), 160.

41.  “To the Memory of Mrs. H. More,” Baptist Magazine 25 (1833), 600.

42.  “Sonnet for the Coronation,” The London Standard, 27 June 1838, 4.

43.  “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings!” in Original Hymns, ed. John Leifchild (London: Ward & Co., 1843), no. 297; also published in Leifchild, Hymns Appropriate to Christian Union, Selected and Original (London: J. Unwin, 1846), no. 62.

Saffery, Maria Grace. Poems on Sacred Subjects. London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., Paternoster Row; Darton and Harvey, Gracechurch Street; and Waugh and Innes, Edinburgh, 1834.

Archival resources

MS, Attwater Papers, acc. 76, II.A.2. (33 autograph poems by Saffery, 1795-1803).

Reeves Collection, Box 17/3, 17/7, 22/1, and 27/1, Bodleian Library, Oxford (a small collection of MS poems by Saffery).

Reeves Collection, Box 25/1, Bodleian Library, Oxford (55 manuscript poems [with illustrations] by Saffery titled “Lyra Domestica,” late 1820s-early 1840s).

Autograph manuscript letters of Maria Grace Andrews Saffery and her sister, Anne Andrews Whitaker, can be found in the Reeves Collection, Box 14/1-4 (65 letters), 14/7-8 (21 letters), 20/2 (9 letters), 21/6 (6 letters); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, Acc. 142, Boxes 1-2, Angus Library,  Regent’s Park College, Oxford (231 letters); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, Acc. 180, A.1-2, 7, Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, Oxford (23 letters).

The complete poetry, prose, and correspondence of Maria Grace Saffery, which includes all the above publications as well as her large collection of unpublished prose and poetry, can be found in Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vols. 5-8. 

For a complete guide to the manuscript materials, see Timothy Whelan, Calendar of the Reeves Collection, Attwater Papers, Attwater/Saffery Papers, Saffery Papers, Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 2011 (rev. ed. 2015), Western Manuscripts Reading Room, Bodleian Library, Oxford. For printed texts of the above letters and poetry, see Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, vols. 5-7.