Penelope Aubin

Penelope Aubin (c. 1679 – 1738?)^[1] was an English novelist, poet, and translator. She published seven novels between 1721 and 1728. Aubin published poetry in 1707 and turned to novels in 1721; she translated French works in the 1720s, spoke publicly on moral and political issues at her Lady's Oratory in 1729,^[2] and wrote a play in 1730. Aubin died in April 1738, survived by her husband until his death in April 1740. After the author's death, her works were gathered and published as A Collection of Entertaining Histories and Novels, Designed to Promote the Cause of Virtue and Honor. Aubin's works have a long history after her death, being both plagiarised and published transatlantically. She is one of a number of eighteenth-century women writers whose works and biography are being more rigorously explored by modern scholars.

^ Aubin's obituary was placed by her husband and published in the Daily Post on Friday 5 May 1738. She was Interred at St George's Southwark just over a week before the obituary appeared. Aubin's date of death has long been erroneously shown as 1731 as this was the date suggested in a possibly satirical piece written at the time by Prevost claiming she was dead (and ugly). The Orlando Project lists 1739 as Aubin's date of death, the Oxford English Dictionary site suggests that Aubin died much earlier in 1731. See http://oed.hertford.ox.ac.uk/main/content/view/394/440/ Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine
^ Debbie Welham 'The Lady and the Old Woman: Mrs Midnight the Orator and Her Political Provence' in Min Wild and Noel Chevalier, Reading Christopher Smart in the Twenty-First Century; Bucknell University Press (2013)

[1] Aubin's obituary was placed by her husband and published in the Daily Post on Friday 5 May 1738. She was Interred at St George's Southwark just over a week before the obituary appeared. Aubin's date of death has long been erroneously shown as 1731 as this was the date suggested in a possibly satirical piece written at the time by Prevost claiming she was dead (and ugly). The Orlando Project lists 1739 as Aubin's date of death, the Oxford English Dictionary site suggests that Aubin died much earlier in 1731. See http://oed.hertford.ox.ac.uk/main/content/view/394/440/ Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine

[2] Debbie Welham 'The Lady and the Old Woman: Mrs Midnight the Orator and Her Political Provence' in Min Wild and Noel Chevalier, Reading Christopher Smart in the Twenty-First Century; Bucknell University Press (2013)

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