Felicia Hemans, High Street, Davetry, Northants.
Posted by: 
greysman
N 52° 15.487 W 001° 09.684
30U E 625488 N 5791339
A plaque, it's slate with blue wording, above a pet shop in Daventry's High Street.
Waymark Code: WMBZAN
Location: East Midlands, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 07/07/2011
Views: 6
Felicia Hemans (25 September 1793 – 16 May 1835) was an English poet. Born Felicia Dorothea Browne in Liverpool but she soon moved to Denbighshire in North Wales with her family, where she spent her youth. Her first poems, dedicated to the Prince of Wales, were published in Liverpool in 1808, when she was only fourteen. She quickly followed them up with "England and Spain" [1808] and "The domestic affections", published in 1812, the year of her marriage to Captain Alfred Hemans, an Irish army officer some years older than herself.
The marriage took her away from Wales, to Daventry in Northamptonshire until 1814 and this plaque is on the house in which she briefly lived.
During their first six years of marriage, Felicia gave birth to five sons, including Charles Isidore Hemans, and then the couple separated.
Marriage had not prevented her from continuing her literary career, with several volumes of poetry being published in the period after 1816, beginning with "The Restoration of the works of art to Italy" (1816) and "Modern Greece" (1817). "Tales and historic scenes" was the collection which came out in 1819, the year of their separation.
From 1831 onwards, she lived in Dublin and her poetic output continued. Her major collections, including The Forest Sanctuary (1825), Records of Woman and Songs of the Affections (1830) were immensely popular, especially with female readers. Her last books, sacred and profane, are the substantive Scenes and Hymns of Life and National Lyrics, and Songs for Music. She was by now a well-known literary figure and had a popular following in the US and the UK. When she died of dropsy, Wordsworth and Walter Savage Landor composed memorial verses in her honour.
Today her best-known poems are probably "The Homes of England" and "Casabianca" (better known as "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck"),see; Casabianca
Her name is remembered in Hemans Road, one of the main roads through a large housing estate on the north side of Daventry.
Details culled from Wikipedia.