Margaret Collier

Margaret Collier (1719 – 1794) was an English correspondent of Samuel Richardson.

Life Collier was born in Salisbury in 1719. Her parents were Margaret and Arthur Collier. Her father had acquired the benefice of Steeple Langford in 1704. Her father blamed their financial difficulties on his wife. ) Her family had then moved to Salisbury where Jane and Margaret were born. Her father sold the reversion of the Langford advowson to Corpus Christi College, Oxford before he died in 1732. It was said that Margaret had a talent for catching a likeness of someone and she had cut a silhouette of Fielding

In 1755 she went to live on the Isle of Wight where she would read the novels of Samuel Richardson to a couple she know. She read them both Clarissa, which she had read three times before, and Richardson's novel Sir Charles Grandison. Collier gained a reputation as a fan of Richardson