Dorothea Primrose Campbell

Dorothea Primrose Campbell (4 May 1793 – 6 January 1863) was a poet, novelist and teacher from the Shetland islands of Scotland. She wrote a novel, Harley Radington: A Tale, Campbell continued to write in the face of family trauma, poverty, and ethnic and gender discrimination. Her melodic, whimsical poetry and her works of fiction are seen as revealing works that cover historical and societal barriers which Campbell herself was facing. and was baptised on 11 May in her birthplace. The many difficulties included long family struggles with debts from her grandfather, her mother's struggle against opium addiction, and the death of her father when she was just 16. and in 1813 opened her own school in Lerwick. Nonetheless, court records reveal that she owed sums to creditors in 1822, 1823, and 1835.

In 1841, Campbell was invited to move from Shetland to England, to serve as a governess to Dr Clarke's family, which consisted of his daughter, Eliza Frances Hook, and Eliza's husband, James Hook.

Perseverance and downfall Campbell applied unsuccessfully for several jobs, but as a woman over forty and a Shetlander, the prejudices against her were strong.

Death In January 1863, Campbell died at the Aged Governesses' Asylum in Kentish Town in London, where she had been living as an inmate at the time of the 1861 England Census.

Writings Poems, Inverness (1811) Aspiring to relieve her family's grim financial status, Campbell corresponded with the publisher J. Young, whose support meant that Campbell's Poems were published in duodecimo at Inverness in 1811.

Campbell's second, London edition of Poems appeared in November 1816.

In this anthology, Campbell also made reference to fellow Scottish writer, Beatrice Grant, with a poem entitled To Mrs Grant of Duthell. On Reading Her "Intellectual Education". The tale, set in her birthplace, the Shetland Islands, 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 along with concurrent works by others set in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. In a September 1821 letter to Walter Scott, she wrote, "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 seen by many in Britain as a "little-known country" at the time.

There are conflicting accounts of how long Campbell wrote for the Lady's Monthly Museum. It appears she could have been publishing as Ora for any period between 1813 and 1853.

Works Poems (Inverness, J. Young, 1811) Poems (London, Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1816) Harley Radington: A Tale (London, A. K. Newman, 1821)