{{short description|English poet and translator (1778–1852)}} {{about|the writer (baptised 1778 – 1852)|her mother of the same name (1757–1834)|Margaret Holford (the elder)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=November 2017}} {{Use British English|date=November 2017}} '''Margaret Holford''' (1778–1852) (also published as '''Margaret Hodson''') was an English poet and translator. Her most successful work was a historical verse romance, ''Wallace, or, The Fight of Falkirk'' (1809).
==Life== Her mother, also Margaret Holford (1757–1834) was likewise an author, and their works have sometimes been confused in bibliographies.<ref name=odnb>{{Cite encyclopedia |first=Kathryn |last=Sutherland |title=Holford, Margaret (baptised 1778, died 1852) |encyclopedia=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2004 |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/13450 |url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13450 |url-access=subscription |accessdate= 20 June 2013}}</ref> Her father, Allen Holford, died when Margaret Holford the younger was a child.<ref name="Orlando">{{Cite web |work=Orlando Project |title=Margaret Holford the Younger. |url=http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=holfm2 |accessdate=7 December 2014 |archive-date=27 July 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160727042926/http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=holfm2 |url-status=dead }}</ref> She was the eldest of her parents' four daughters and educated herself through reading at home.<ref name=odnb/><ref name="Orlando"/> Years later, she travelled to France and claimed that she was able to communicate with any of the locals whom she spoke there.<ref name="Orlando"/>
Holford was baptised on 1 June 1778 in Chester and on 16 October 1826 married Septimus Hodson (1768–1833), chaplain in ordinary to the Prince of Wales, who was then Anglican rector of Thrapston, Northamptonshire. She was his third wife. The marriage took place in South Kirkby, Yorkshire and they lived in Sharow Lodge, Ripon.<ref name=odnb/> Her later work was published under her married name, Margaret Hodson.
Her husband died in 1833.<ref name=odnb/> After her husband's death, she stayed with a Mrs. Lawrence, a woman who owned the estate of Studley Park in Ripon.<ref name="Orlando"/> By 1835 Holford had bought a cottage in Plantation Terrace, Dawlish on the Devon Coast and remained there until she died at home on 11 September 1852.<ref name="Orlando"/><ref name=odnb/>
==Career== The first published work of Margaret Holford the younger is thought to have been the two-volume ''Calaf, a Persian Tale'', written when she was 17 and published anonymously about 1798.<ref name="Orlando"/> Her most successful was a historical verse romance entitled ''Wallace, or, The Fight of Falkirk''. Also published anonymously, it appeared in 1809, a year after Walter Scott's ''Marmion'', which it is said to have "blatantly imitated".<ref name=odnb/> Around the same time she wrote ''Lines Occasioned by Reading the Poetical Works of Walter Scott'' and sent it to him, but he did not acknowledge receipt of it, despite intervention by their mutual friend, Joanna Baillie.<ref name=odnb/>
The publication of Holford's novel ''First Impressions'' in 1800 compelled Jane Austen to change the title of her own novel to ''Pride and Prejudice''.<ref>Jane Austen Society of North America [http://www.jasna.org/info/works.html Retrieved 6 October 2016.]</ref>
Her later romantic poems included ''Poems'' (1811), ''Margaret of Anjou'' (1816) and ''The Past'' (1819) were not a critical success.<ref name=odnb/> She also wrote a three-volume novel, ''Warbeck of Wolfstein'' (published 1820), other poems, and a play that was never published or performed.<ref name="Orlando"/> She published a translation ''Italian Stories'' in 1823.<ref name=odnb/>
Following her marriage in 1826 she only published a translation from Spanish entitled ''The Lives of Vasco Nunez de Balboa and Francisco Pizarro'' (1832), dedicated to Robert Southey.<ref name=odnb/>
She had a wide circle of literary acquaintances and correspondents that included correspondence with Walter Scott in 1825, Samuel Coleridge, William Wordsworth, William Sotheby, and Walter Savage Landor, who in 1845 encouraged her to reissue her successful novel ''Wallace''.<ref name=odnb/> Joanna Baillie was a close associate.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Radcliffe| first=David| work=English Poetry 1579-1830: Spenser and the Tradition |url=http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/authorrecord.php?action=GET&recordid=33367 |title=Margaret Holford (1778-1852) |accessdate=20 June 2013 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20140108094450/http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/authorrecord.php?action=GET&recordid=33367 |archivedate=8 January 2014 |df=dmy-all}}</ref> Robert Southey stayed for a week with the Hodsons in 1829.
==References== {{reflist|30em}}
==External links== *[https://allpoetry.com/Margaret-Holford 17 poems by Holford] on ''All Poetry'' website
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Holford, Margaret}} Category:1778 births Category:1852 deaths Category:English women poets Category:English translators Category:Writers from Chester Category:People from Dawlish Category:English women non-fiction writers