Anne Dick
{{Short description|Scottish poet and eccentric, died 1741}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2017}}
{{Use British English|date=January 2017}}
Lady Anne Dick or Anne Cunyngham or Anne Mackenzie (died 1741) was a Scottish noblewoman, poet and eccentric. Some of her lampoons and verses are said to have embarrassed her friends.
Background
Anne Mackenzie's grandfather was George Mackenzie, 1st Earl of Cromartie and her father was a Scottish judge, Lord Royston. One of the earliest things known about her is that she married William Cunyngham, who came to notice when his mother's grandfather died in 1728. This brought wealth, and he and his wife took the surname Dick,The Feminist Companion to Literature in English, eds Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 290. as Sir William Dick and Anne, Lady Dick.Jennett Humphreys, "Dick, Anne, Lady Dick (died 1741)", rev. David Turner, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, UK: OUP, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7593. Retrieved 21 December 2014.]
The baronetcy had been created for Sir John Dick Bt (1719–1804) as the British Consul at Leghorn.{{Cite book |last1=Grant |first1=Robert |title=Old and New Edinburgh Vol V |page=114 |url=http://edinburghbookshelf.org.uk/volume5/page125.html |accessdate=21 December 2014}}
Consternation
Lady Anne and her maidservant caused consternation by appearing in public in Edinburgh dressed as boys. Her peers and friends were also said to have been embarrassed when she published lampoons and verses of a "coarse" nature, for which she was censured in the Dictionary of National Biography. Three such appeared in a Book of Ballads (41-43) in 1823C. Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Book of Ballads, 1823. and others in 1824.Thomas George Stevenson, Four Books of Choice Old Scotish Ballads, 1823-1844, 1828. [https://books.google.com/books?id=of0vAAAAYAAJ Retrieved Dec. 13, 2021.]
Death
Dick died childless in 1741 and her husband in 1746. The title passed to her brother-in-law, the physician Sir Alexander Dick, who moved into the family seat of Prestonfield House in Edinburgh.
References
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Category:18th-century Scottish poets
Category:Writers from Edinburgh