Jean Adam

Jean Adam (or Adams) (April 30 1704 - April 3 1765) was a Scottish poet.

Born in Greenock into a maritime family, her most famous work (though the authorship has long been disputed) is There's Nae Luck Aboot The Hoose, a tale of a sailor's wife and the safe return of her husband from the sea. It is known that Robert Burns remarked on its quality in 1771, some years after Adam's death.

Adam had a limited education in reading, writing, and sewing. Jean Adam first encountered poetry not at school but when she read extracts from Sir Philip Sidney's romance The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (1590) whilst working in domestic service with the minister of West Kirk, Greenock. There she also became acquainted with John Milton’s work and his translations of the classics.

She began writing earnestly, and in 1734 her work was discovered by a wealthy sponsor, who published a volume of her poems under the title Miscellany Poems by Mrs. Jane Adams, Cartsdyke. He nonetheless counselled her on her moderate, rather than exceptional talent. Taking umbrage at this criticism, she forwarded copies to Boston, USA, but success did not follow.

Adams worked at a day school for many years. She gave the school up after 1751 and turned to domestic labour for the rest of her life. Unable to recapture the fleeting talent she had, Jean Adams died penniless in Glasgow's Town’s Hospital on 3 April 1765, after it was reported that she had been wandering about in the streets.

Sources

Karina Williamson, 'Adam , Jean (1704–1765)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.

See Also

List of early-modern women poets (UK)