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Maria Grace Saffery (née Andrews) (1773–1858) was a Baptist poetess and hymn-writer.

Early life

Maria Grace Saffery was born 1773 and died 5 March 1858 in Westbury district Wiltshire, England. Saffery was the daughter of William Andrews of Stroud Green, Newbury, Berkshire. At the age of fifteen, she started writing her first big piece and showed great abilities in doing so. Saffery was originally brought under the personal influence of Thomas Scott, the commentator.^[1]

Personal and family life

Maria Saffery had a sister named Anne, who was also a writer. Maria married John Saffery pastor of the Baptist church at Salisbury, becoming his second wife, in 1799. They had six children, the eldest, Philip John Saffery, succeeded to the office of paster of the church at his father's death in 1825.^[1] She also created a girl's school in Salisbury. The next year she retired to Bratton in Wiltshire, where the rest of her life was spent with her daughter and later died and was buried in the graveyard of the baptist chapel at the school. ^[2]

Major works

Hymns

Cheyt Sing. A Poem. By a Young Lady of Fifteen (1790)^[3]
Tis the Great Father we adore (1828)
Poems on Sacred Subjects (1834)
God of the sunlight hours, how sad (1834)
There is a little lonely fold (1834)
Fain, O my child, I'd have thee know (1844)^[2]

Novels

The Noble Enthusiast (1792)^[4]

Notes

^ ^a ^b Lowther, William Boswell (1897). "Saffery, Maria Grace (DNB00)". Wikisource. Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900. p. 114.
^ ^a ^b "Maria Grace Saffery". Hymnary.org.
^ Whelan, Timothy. "Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840. Part 2".
^ Whelan, Timothy (Winter 2012). "West Country Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840". Wordsworth Circle. 43.