A Life of Propriety

Anne Murray Powell was born to a middle-class English family in 1755. She was neither famous nor unusually talented but her story embodies the values of her time, place, and class. Having emigrated to Boston at sixteen, in 1775 she married and returned to England during her husband's training as a lawyer. They eventually settled in British North America, residing chiefly in York (Toronto). Anne, as well as being the mother of nine children, was a leading figure in York's social circles a member of a generation that matured during a period of dramatic social change. Katherine McKenna's biography, based on an extensive collection of letters and papers, shows how the three distinct environments in which she and her family lived England, New England, and Upper Canada were shaped by important aspects of late eighteenth-century and early Victorian society.