Elizabeth Hitchener

Elizabeth Hitchener sometimes called Portia or Bessy (bapt.1783 – 4 December 1821) was a British schoolmistress and poet.

[1] Her strong-minded father had been born with the name of Yorke but he had adopted the name of Hitchener after rejecting a life of smuggling to run the Friar's Oak inn at Clayton on the road from Brighton to London.

[1] John Pilfold and his wife had joined Hitchener's father in advising against this as it would damage her reputation.

The stay ended suddenly and for an unknown reason and Hitchener left and decided to go back to teaching at Hurstpierpoint.

[5] Hitchener is possibly the basis of Miss Celinda Toobad, a character in Thomas Love Peacock's 1818 novella Nightmare Abbey.

[6] The journalist Henry James Slack lent William Michael Rossetti some of Shelley's letters to Hitchener.

Slack told Thomas James Wise, who saw the letters, was that Hitchener had gone abroad, and married an Austrian officer.