learnt some literature, which consisted of Scott's longer poems and The Vicar of Wakefield, read aloud by Miss Mangnall herself, geography, spelling, the catechism, and a little pencil drawing. For bad spelling the young ladies were invariably sent to bed." Miss Mangnall took over at Crofton about 1808 and supported her two unmarried sisters, Eliza and Sarah, from her successful school and publishing earnings. She continued to head it until her death there on 1 May 1820 "after a severe illness, which was borne with the utmost Christian resignation." She was buried in Crofton churchyard near her "inestimable friend" Elizabeth Fayrer (1782-1816). Fayrer was another teacher at Crofton (also mentioned in the Firth Journals) and the two have been described as "kindred spirits" and referred to each other as "dearest friends". In Mangnall's will she requested "to be interred in the same grave with my friend Elizabeth Fayrer in Crofton Church Yard." Her headstone reads, "Sacred to the Memory / of / Richmal Mangnall / of Crofton Hall / who departed this life on / May day 1820 // Ah when shall spring / visit the mouldering Urn / of Virtue Knowledge / Friendship naught / remain save her / blest soul now fled / to Realms of Bliss." In 2013 a British Blue Plaque was dedicated to Richmal Mangnall by the Wakefield Civic Society. Publications Historical and Miscellaneous Questions For the Use of Young People (1798) Half an Hour's Lounge, or Poems (1805) Compendium of Geography (1815) Literary mentions Mangnall's Questions appears in: Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (1847-8), satire, "a pair of pink cheeks and blue eyes' inferior to 'the gifts of genius, the accomplishments of the mind, the mastery of Mangnall's Questions, and a ladylike knowledge of botany and geology." Tom Tiddler's Ground by Charles Dickens (1861), "Indeed, whenever Miss Pupford gives a little lecture on the mythology of the misguided heathens (always carefully excluding Cupid from recognition), and tells how Minerva sprang, perfectly equipped, from the brain of Jupiter, she is half supposed to hint, "So I myself came into the world, completely up in Pinnock, Mangnall, Tables, and the use of the Globes." Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell (1866), "There was one of the heathen deities in Mangnall's Questions whose office it was to bring news." This references the chapter in Questions, "Alphabetical List of the Heathen Mythology, the Demigods, and Heroes of