Dorothea Primrose Campbell


Dorothea Primrose Campbell was a Shetland poet, novelist and teacher. She authored a novel, Harley Radington: A Tale, and had poems and short fiction printed in London periodicals. Campbell continued to share her talent with the world in the face of family trauma, poverty, and ethnic and gender discrimination. Her melodic and whimsical poems and works of fiction are seen as revealing works of English literature, covering themes reminiscent of historical and societal barriers Campbell faced due to her own circumstances.

Life

Early life and family difficulties

Dorothea Primrose Campbell was born in Lerwick, Shetland, Scotland on the fourth of May in 1793. On the eleventh of May in 1793, Dorothea Primrose Campbell was baptised at her birthplace, Lerwick. Her father, Duncan Campbell, was a surgeon who had married one of the Scotts of Scottshall in Scalloway, Elizabeth, the eldest of a large family.
Dorothea was the eldest sibling of her family as well. It is recorded that she had a younger sister and two brothers. Dorothea's life was full of many difficulties. Besides her family's perpetual struggle with hereditary debts from her grandfather, her mother struggled with opium addiction, and her father died when she was just sixteen.

Teaching

Dorothea Primrose Campbell was well educated. It appears that she began writing poetry at a very young age, and used her writing abilities to support her family. By 1812 Campbell became a teacher. In 1813, Campbell opened her own school at Lerwick. Through her Scott family connection she met Sir Walter Scott, a distant relative, during his tour of the north of Scotland aboard the Lighthouse Commission's yacht. Scott was encouraging, and even shipped her a piano for the little school to teach the children of the gentry she had established in Lerwick. Sadly, the school closed due to Campbell's poor health and her mother's opium addiction.
After the closure of the school, Campbell worked as a schoolteacher to support her family with her own earnings. Between 1817 and 1821, Campbell corresponded with Walter Scott and he offered both moral and financial support to her. Despite this financial support, her debt is apparent in court records revealing that she owed small sums to creditors in 1822, 1823, and 1835. In 1841, Campbell was invited to move from Shetland to England to work as a governess to Dr Clarke's family, which consisted of his daughter, Eliza Frances Hook, and Eliza's husband, James Hook. Unfortunately, after Campbell arrived in England, the Clarke family went bankrupt and Campbell was left unemployed in England. In the 1841 England Census, she is listed as governess to the seven children of the Richard Smith family at Stoke Newington, Middlesex.

Prejudice, perseverance and downfall

Campbell struggled to find work, applying to several jobs with no luck. As a woman over forty and a Shetlander, the prejudices against her race, age, and sex made it nearly impossible for her to find work. Eventually, Campbell applied to the Royal Literary Fund in 1844 after having been unemployed for some time. The Royal Literary Fund paid her £30 which helped her to get by. She was also able to find a job teaching at Sevenoaks. In the 1851 England Census, Campbell is listed as living alone at 16 Quartre Bras, Hexham, Northumberland, assisted by a pension from the Governesses' Benevolent Institution.

Death

In January of 1863, Campbell died at the Aged Governess' Asylum in Kentish Town in London, where she had been living as an inmate at the time of the 1861 England Census. Undoubtedly, the Asylum was run by the Governesses' Benevolent Institution. On 10 January 1863, she was buried at the former parish of St James, Hampstead Road, St Pancras, Camden.

Writings

''Poems'', Inverness (1811)

Campbell had a talent for writing poetry and short fiction. Aspiring to relieve her family's grim financial status, Campbell corresponded with the publisher J. Young, whose support and sympathy meant that Campbell's Poems were published in duodecimo at Inverness in 1811.
According to records, Dorothea Primrose Campbell was only 10 years old when she wrote Address to the Evening Star. Despite the work being published in 1811, Campbell mentioned its earlier date of composition in 1816. However, one critique notes that Campbell's poems published at Inverness "do not read like juvenilia. They are flowing, expressive, verbally and musically skilled, whether in conventional poetic diction or more colloquial mode."

''Poems'', London (1816)

In November 1816 Campbell issued a second, London edition of Poems. The subscribers were mostly from Lerwick and London. It included some poems from her first volume. "Campbell often expresses sorrow and nostalgia in exile and a longing for wider prospects." Campbell's straits appear as her "tone becomes progressively darker, dwelling on death and the slights meted out to poverty." Sadly the poems did not bring prosperity. The publisher may have gone bankrupt – only half the stock of 500 copies had sold by April 1818, – though Sarah Josepha Hale noted in Woman's Record, "The character of her poetry, chiefly suggested by the wild, rough scenery with which she lives surrounded, is healthy in its tone and breathes of home and heaven."

''Harley Radington: A Tale'' (1821)

In October 1821, A. K. Newman of Minerva Press published Harley Radington: A Tale, Campbell's one known novel. The tale itself impressed and interested a handful of readers. In 1823, William Scott Burn exalted Campbell's writing capabilities in a letter to his friend: "I read your Miss Campbell's Harley Radington when I was ill – that woman has very considerable talent, and should be encouraged to employ it oftener." Campbell seems to have been trying to fit her novel into a national-tale category, like previous works set in Ireland and Scotland Highlands. In a letter to Walter Scott from September of 1821, she writes, "I have published an attempt at a 'Zetland Tale'". Presumably, Campbell decided to subtitle the book "A Tale" over "A Zetland Tale" due to her uncertainty that the Shetland Islands would be accepted by the public as a novel "set in the regions of Great Britain," as Shetland was revered by many in Britain as a "little-known country" at the time. According to Penny Fielding, researcher and Professor of English at the University of Edinburgh, "The novel focuses on the journey of the metropolitan hero to a distant part of the nation where he has family associations, and touches on questions of gender, superstition, ethnography, land improvement, and travel."

Campbell as Ora, the ''Lady's Monthly Museum'' (c. 1813–1853)

Recently found evidence has revealed that Campbell was a member of the Lady's Monthly Museum for a number of years. During this time, she adopted a pseudonym, "Ora from Thule," under which she published 53 poems and tales. One of them, "The Apollonian Wreath," begins,
O hail! thou solitary star!
To me how dear thy dewy ray,
Which kindly streaming from afar,
Illumes a pensive wand'rer's way.
For while beneath thy lovely light,
The misty mountains round me rise,
The world receding leaves my sight,
And daring fancy mounts the skies.
Forgetful of my sorrows here,
Entranced, I muse on joys to come,
– And far above thy lucid sphere
My trembling spirit seeks her home.
There are conflicting dates as to how long Campbell wrote for the Lady's Monthly Museum. It appears she could have been publishing as Ora for any period between 1813 to 1853.

Works