Susannah Watts

Born in Leicester in 1768, Susannah Watts—more often listed as Susanna Watts—was an English writer, translator, artist, and abolitionist. Reliable sources agree that she spent much of her life in Leicester and that her writing grew out of a strong intellectual and reform-minded circle there. She is especially associated with A Walk Through Leicester (1804), often described as an early town guide, which helped preserve a vivid picture of the city in her day.

Watts was also deeply involved in the anti-slavery movement. She co-founded The Humming Bird, an anti-slavery periodical, supported campaigns against goods produced by enslaved labor, and gathered signatures for petitions linked to the London Female Anti-Slavery Society. That mix of literary work and public activism makes her stand out: she was not only writing about the world around her, but also trying to change it.

Accounts of her life also note her translations and artistic work, and modern scholars continue to place her among important women writers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Although she is still less widely known than some of her contemporaries, her legacy survives through her Leicester writing, her reform work, and the picture she offers of women’s intellectual and political lives in that period.