author
Catherine Ann Turner Dorset
1749–1816
An early British writer for children, remembered for witty animal poems and moral tales that gently poked fun at human behavior. Her best-known work, The Peacock “At Home”, became a popular companion piece to William Roscoe’s The Butterfly’s Ball.
3 Audiobooks
The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair
by Catherine Ann Turner Dorset, William Roscoe
The Peacock 'At Home:' A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball
by Catherine Ann Turner Dorset
Think Before You Speak; Or, The Three Wishes
by Catherine Ann Turner Dorset, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont
About the author
Born Catherine Ann Turner, she was the sister of writer Charlotte Smith and later published as Catherine Ann Dorset. Reliable reference sources identify her as a British author of children’s literature and poetry, active in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
She is best known for The Peacock “At Home” (1807), a playful social satire in verse that imagines a grand gathering of birds. She also wrote Think Before You Speak; or, The Three Wishes and other moral tales for young readers, works that helped build her reputation as a lively and accessible writer for children.
Some biographical details, including her exact birth and death years, appear differently across catalogues and reference works. Because of that uncertainty, it is safest to describe her as a late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British children’s author whose poems and tales remained well known long after their first publication.