author
Catherine Ann Turner Dorset
1749–1816
Best known for the lively children's poem The Peacock "At Home," this English writer brought wit, animals, and gentle social satire together in verse that delighted young readers. She also moved in a literary family, with ties to novelist and poet Charlotte Smith.
3 Audiobooks
The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair
by Catherine Ann Turner Dorset, William Roscoe
Think Before You Speak; Or, The Three Wishes
by Catherine Ann Turner Dorset, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont
The Peacock 'At Home:' A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball
by Catherine Ann Turner Dorset
About the author
Catherine Ann Turner Dorset was an English writer of children's verse, usually dated to the mid-18th and early 19th centuries. Reliable sources agree that she was the younger sister of Charlotte Smith, and that she became known for playful moral and comic poems for children, especially The Peacock "At Home" (1807), a sequel of sorts to William Roscoe's popular insect poem The Butterfly's Ball.
Her writing often used talking animals and light satire to entertain while gently teaching manners and behavior. She also collaborated with her sister on literary work, and several of her pieces continued to circulate long after their first publication, helping secure her place in the history of early children's literature.
The exact dates attached to her life vary across sources, so it's safest to say that she was born in the early 1750s and died in the 1830s. No clear verified portrait image was available from the source page reviewed, which is not unusual for a writer of her period.