Sarah Dixon

Sarah Dixon (baptised 28 September 1671 – 23 April 1765) was an English poet, probably born in Rochester, Kent, where she was baptised. She took to writing "during a Youth of much Leisure", although her earliest surviving dated poem is from 1716. The 500 subscribers to her anonymous Poems on Several Occasions included Elizabeth Carter and Alexander Pope, and the society hostess Maria Coventry, Countess of Coventry.

Family and work Dixon was the daughter of James Dixon, barrister at the Middle Temple, and Elizabeth Southouse, and the granddaughter of Prebendary Robert Dixon (died 1688). She is likely to have spent most of her life at St Stephen's, also known as Hackington, just north of Canterbury, although it has been suggested the family moved to Newnham, Kent when her father remarried.

Dixon had a brother, who probably died in his late teens. There are indications that she also had a sister. Her niece, Mrs Eliza Bunce (née De Langle), was among her subscribers and added further poems of Dixon's to her copy. Eliza Bunce's husband, Rev. John Bunce (died 1786), Vicar of St Stephen's, encouraged Dixon and corrected her work for publication.

Death Sarah Dixon died on 23 April 1765 at the age of 93, according to the St Austin's memorial stone, at the village of Hackington, Kent.