Ellin Devis (December 1746 – February 1820), also known as Eilen Devis or Ellin Davis,[1] was a schoolmistress and author of The Accidence (1775), a popular eighteenth-century grammar.
The surviving six children included Ellin and her siblings Frances Devis (1751-17?
[2] Devis's The Accidence (1775) may have been the first English grammar written specifically for female students.
[4] Devis taught at several schools in fashionable areas of London, and her pupils include Maria Edgeworth, Frances Burney and her sister Susannah, Hester Thrale and later her daughter Cecilia Piozzi.
While Devis was mistress of the Queen’s Square school in Bloomsbury, England, it was known as “the Young Ladies Eton.”[5] Devis's unique teaching style was successful, and at the time of her death in 1820, she had earned enough to own the school.