Jean Marishall
Very little is known about Jean Marishall (fl. 1765-88), who is also sometimes indexed as Jane Marshall. Pamela Perkins surmises in Women Writers and the Edinburgh Enlightenment that Marshall was probably born in the late 1730s or early ‘40s into a middle-class family in Edinburgh. She lived in London during the 1760s, where she wrote two novels, The History of Miss Clarinda Cathcart and Miss Fanny Renton (1765) and Alicia Montague (1767). By 1772, she had returned to Edinburgh, where she attempted unsuccessfully to bring her play Sir Harry Gaylove to the stage. The play was ultimately published by subscription, with notable supporters among other luminaries of the Edinburgh Enlightenment. In 1789, Marishall published A Series of Letters, an account of the struggles she faced as a woman trying to make a living by her pen.
Bibliography
Pam Perkins, Women and the Edinburgh Enlightenment (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010).