Anne Raikes Harding

{{Short description|English writer}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2016}}

{{Use British English|date=October 2016}}

{{Infobox writer

| name = Anne Raikes Harding

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| birth_name = Anne Raikes Orchard

| birth_date = {{birth date|df=yes|1779|03|05}}

| birth_place = Bath, England

| death_date = {{death date and age|df=yes|1858|04|28|1779|03|05}}

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| occupation = Writer

| language = English

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| genre = Fiction

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Anne Raikes Harding, née Orchard (5 March 1781 – 28 April 1858) was an English novelist and miscellaneous writer.

Harding was born on 5 March 1781 in Bath. She married Thomas Harding but he died intestate in 1805, leaving her to raise their three children. She ran a school and worked as a governess while writing her novels.{{Cite journal|last=Howard|first=Rachel|date=2007|title=Domesticating the Novel: Moral-Domestic Fiction, 1820-1834|url=http://orca.cf.ac.uk/55754/1/U584275.pdf|journal=ProQuest}}

Harding published all her writing anonymously. As well as her novels, she wrote An Epitome of Universal History (London, 1848),* {{Cite book |last=Harding |first=Anne Raikes |title=An epitome of universal history from the earliest period to the revolutions of 1848 |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t5db8v847&view=1up&seq=6|location = London | publisher = Longman |year=1848}} Sketches of the Highlands (1832), and Little Sermons (1840). She also contributed to reviews and periodicals.{{Cite ODNB|id=12257|title=Harding [née Orchard], Anne Raikes}}

She died on 28 April 1858, at the house of her son-in-law, the Rev. William Kynaston Groves.{{cite DNB|wstitle=Harding, A.|last=Watt|first=Francis|authorlink=|volume=24}} Watt cites Gentleman's Magazine 1858, i. 684; the British Museum catalogue; and Halkett and Laing's Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature.