Grizelda Elizabeth Cottnam Tonge

Grizelda Elizabeth Cottnam Tonge (1803-1825) was a Nova Scotian poet and was known as the “highly-gifted songstress of Acadia.”^[1] She was the daughter of William Cottnam Tonge.

Notable works

• “Lines composed at midnight . . . occasioned by the recollection of my sisters,”
• “To my dear grandmother, on her 80th birth day” (Poem to her Great Grandmother Deborah How Cottnam ("Portia"), who was also a poet.)
• “A hymn of praise”
• “Lines . . . composed in the church yard of Windsor, N.S., . . .”
• “Extempore lines, occasioned by seeing the corpse of Mary, youngest daughter of the Hon. James Fraser. . . .”

References

Further reading

• David Curry. Some Literary Figures from Windsor’s Past: Deborah How Cottnam (“Portia”), Griselda Tonge & Sir Charles G.D. Roberts. West Hants Historical Society. 2006
• Gwendolyn Davies, "Researching Eighteenth-Century Maritime Women Writers: Deborah How Cottnam - A Case Study", in Working in Women's Archives: Researching Women's Private Literature and Archival Documents, ed. Helen M Buss and Marlene Kadar (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001), 35-50
• "Literary Culture in the Maritime Provinces", in History of the Book in Canada, vol. 1, 368-83