Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hawkins, Susanna
HAWKINS, SUSANNA (1787–1868), Scottish poetess, daughter of a blacksmith near Ecclefechan, was born in 1787. Dedicating her poems to a lady of the house of Queensberry, she describes her birthplace as adjoining ‘the famed camp of Burnswark, where the brave Caledonians fought against the Romans.’ Receiving a meagre education, Susanna was in early life a herd and a domestic servant, but at length obtained some elementary knowledge, and became an author in her middle age. The proprietor of the ‘Dumfries Courier,’ charmed with her as a character, gratuitously printed her poems in little volumes with paper covers, and for half a century she was known as a wandering minstrel of the borders. She sold her booklets from house to house, travelling far in search of natives of Dumfries. She penetrated into England; and a genial Manchester patron declared that there were two forces a Dumfriesian in England could not escape—death and Susy Hawkins. Sir F. W. Johnstone, bart., of Wester Hall, Dumfriesshire, granted her ground for a cottage at Relief, near her brother's residence in the neighbourhood of Ecclefechan, and here she died through an accident, 29 March 1868.
The little volumes are all more or less reprints of one another, and they are now rare. It seems that Susanna began to publish about 1826, but what appears to be a first edition of ‘The Poems and Songs of Susanna Hawkins’ is dated 1838. This contains sixty pages; subsequent volumes reach six pages more. Nine volumes in all are extant, the last being published in 1861, and it is surmised that there might be one or two more. The poems are largely of a local and occasional character, and though fairly well rhymed are generally more rhetorical than poetic. The lofty autobiographical dedication is more entertaining than the verses it precedes.
[Irving's Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen; Dumfries Courier and Annan Observer; information from Mr. Cuthbertson of the Annan Observer, Mr. Anderson, publisher, Dumfries, and Mr. Fraser, publisher, Dalbeattie.]