Barbara Hofland

Barbara Hofland (1770 – 4 November 1844) was an English writer of some 66 didactic, moral stories for children, and of schoolbooks and poetry.

She began writing for the local paper and started a milliner's shop, but she sold it when she married the businessman Thomas Bradshawe Hoole in 1796, only to be widowed two years later with an infant son.

Although her new husband had a good local reputation and had exhibited at the Royal Academy, his wife's writings were to remain the main source of family income.

[7] During her writing life, Hofland became a friend of the architect John Soane, who asked her to provide a description of his museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields,[8] and of the writers Maria Edgeworth and Mary Russell Mitford.

[11] She also wrote geographical and topographical books for teaching purposes, and a longer work in verse: A Season at Harrogate (1812).