Susannah Gunning

[5] On 8 August 1768, she married Captain John Gunning of the 65th Regiment of Foot, who distinguished himself at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

[5] Susannah attempted to advance her daughter through marriage, but this failed and resulted in a public family row in 1791 which Horace Walpole described as the "Gunninghiad".

[2] Despite his boasting about conquests of aristocratic women, he altered his will the day before his death in 1797, leaving £8,000 and his Ireland estate to Susannah Gunning and their daughter.

An obituary in The Gentleman's Magazine was more frank, claiming Gunning was "a lady well known, if not highly celebrated, in the republik of letters" whose works were "among the middling class of novels".

The tone and plot of these novels were consistent with popular themes of the time – largely young women marrying into aristocracy.

[4] It is unlikely that Gunning wrote any fiction during her marriage: the one novel published during this time, The Count de Poland (1780), was most likely written by her sister Margaret Minifie.

During the "Gunninghiad", Gunning wrote a letter to the Duke of Argyll which paints her daughter as a victim and describes her in a melodramatic tone akin to her novels.

Gunning's poem Virginius and Virginia (1792) similarly contains autobiographical details with the theme that a father and child should not "be debar'd".

[2] She often used Gothic language in narratives about family, hinting towards her own experience as a wronged mother who needed to money to care for her children.