Ellen Johnston is known because of her autobiography and later reevaluations of her working class poetry.
10 Facts About Ellen Johnston
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Ellen Johnston was born in Hamilton in Lanarkshire in about 1835.
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Ellen Johnston's mother remarried and when she was thirteen she joined her step father working a power loom.
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Ellen Johnston was interested particularly in the writings of the Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott.
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Ellen Johnston was not shy and she hoped one day to be an actress.
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Ellen Johnston did not get on well with her workmates as she was over keen to please her bosses and she gave birth to a daughter, Mary Achenvole, without being married in 1852.
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Ellen Johnston continued to publish poetry in newspapers as "The Factory Girl" and at one point she gave up work due to illness but lack of money took her back.
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Walter Scott 8.
Ellen Johnston's mother died in 1861 and she went to live with her aunt in Dundee.
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Ellen Johnston's poetry was considered by some as of no lasting value, but in 1991 her poem written in dialect "The Last Sark" was published in An Anthology of Scottish Women Poets.
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Ellen Johnston is studied because she represents the voice of working-class women.