Maria Riddell

Maria Banks Riddell, née Woodley (1772–1808) was a West Indies-born British poet, editor and travel writer, to whom Robert Burns paid tribute as "a votary of the Muses".

Life

Maria Woodley was the daughter of William Woodley, Governor of the Leeward Islands. In 1791 she married Walter Riddell of Glenriddell, younger brother of Robert Burns's patron Robert Riddell, and the pair set up house at an estate called Woodley Park near Dumfries. Burns, a guest at literary parties there, became a close friend and critic of Maria Riddell, writing several love songs for her. In early 1794, he made a drunken overture to her which resulted in them quarrelling and Burns losing the support of his patron, who died that year. Maria and her husband were reconciled with Burns in 1795, and when Burns died in 1796 Maria wrote on him for the Dumfries Journal. She was also a friend of the novelist and poet Helen Craik, another admirer of Burns.

Her husband lost Woodley Park and another property, and died at the end of the century. Maria Riddell and her two children moved to Hampton Court. She married a Welsh landowner, Phillips Lloyd Fletcher, in 1807 and is buried in the Fletcher family vault at Chester.

Works

• Voyage to the Madeira and Leeward and Caribbean Isles, with Sketches of the Natural History of these Islands, Edinburgh, 1792.
• (ed.) The Metrical Miscellany, consisting chiefly of poems hitherto unpublished, 1802. 2nd ed., 1803.