Her father, Thomas Holmes (1751–1827), was a wealthy East India merchant from Worcestershire, who changed his name to Hunter on inheriting an estate, Gobions in North Mymms, Hertfordshire, through his wife, the daughter of the Governor of Bombay, William Hornby.
However, she left him and their baby in 1806, after which Hugh Doherty published a book entitled The Discovery, which included her letters and related that they had eloped after Ann's parents had confined her in a private madhouse.
[3] In 1811, Hugh Doherty brought a successful action against the architect Philip William Wyatt (died 1835) for "criminal conversation" with his wife,[4] but received only £1000 in damages, not the £20,000 he had claimed.
Her novels "tended towards an Ossianic, flowery style" with heroines of "a high degree of feminine softness".
In 1818 she sent him a copy of her Peter the Cruel King of Castile and Leon: An Historical Play in Five Acts.