"Placed by the hand of Providence at an humble distance from the Great," Mary Collyer wrote in 1761, "my cares and pleasures are concentrated within the narrow limits of my little family, and it is in order to contribute to the support and education of my children, I have taken up the pen." Two years later Collyer was dead, from "a lingering illness" occasioned, in her husband's words, "by the agitations of mind she suffered in writing" her last completed work, a translation of Salomon Gessner's Der Tod Abels. These two pathetic references are the only direct accounts we have of Collyer's personal life. Until she signed the dedication to The Death of Abel in 1761, all her works had been published anonymously; she had written in obscurity and without applause, as Elizabeth Carter told Elizabeth Montagu, "for the support of her family ... a laudable employment." An acquaintance of the...