{{Infobox writer | name = Elizabeth Thomas | image = Portrait of Elizabeth Thomas by Giles King.jpg | image_size = | alt = Portrait of Elizabeth Thomas by Giles King | caption = Engraved portrait of Elizabeth Thomas by Giles King, circa 1730s. National Portrait Gallery, London. | pseudonym = Corinna; Eliza; a young lady | birth_date = | birth_place = London | death_date = | death_place = London | resting_place = St Bride's, Fleet Street | language = English | occupation = Poet and letter-writer | period = | subject = | notablework = Metamorphosis of the Town" (1730) | years_active = | portaldisp = yes }} Elizabeth Thomas (1675 – 1731) was a British poet and letter writer. She was part of an important artistic group in London and John Dryden named her "Corinna". However, she suffered from lifelong financial precarity, romantic disappointment, and latterly, health problems. Her reputation was damaged by Alexander Pope and she spent three years in a debtor's prison near the end of her life. Life and career Early years Elizabeth Thomas was born in London, the only child of Elizabeth Osborne (died 1719), aged 16, and lawyer Emmanuel Thomas (died 1677), aged 60. Her father died when she was an infant, leaving Osborne to take care of her. Osborne and Thomas faced many financial difficulties while living in Surrey, and after some time they returned to London to live in Great Russel Street. She was educated at home, was well read, and learned some French and Latin. Mid-life By her mid twenties, Thomas was a confident poet who shared her poetry with literary figures of the day. As an impoverished gentlewoman, she was dependent on others for patronage, and she was fortunate to be part of an illustrious artistic and literary circle which included Mary Chudleigh, Mary Astell, Judith Drake, Elizabeth Elstob, Mary Wortley Montagu, John Norris, and painter Sarah Hoadly, wife of Benjamin Hoadly. She sent John Dryden two poems not long before his death, and he responded, "your Verses were, I thought, too good to be a Woman's." Dryden then compared Thomas to the famous Katherine Philips. It was also John Dryden who gave her, at her request, a nom de plume: "Corinna". Her first known publication was an elegy, "To the Memory of the Truly Honoured John Dryden, Esq", published anonymously in the collection Luctus Britannici (1700). Thomas was engaged