Maxwell, aforementioned, claimed that Blamire was "unquestionably the best female writer of her age". She has been credited with anticipating the Romantic conception of the world immortalized by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Furthermore, her poem The Nun's Return to the World [...] may have been an influence on Lord Byron's The Prisoner of Chillon: Indeed, the late Professor Jonathan Wordsworth of St Catherine's College, Cambridge, in his lecture at the dedication service of Susanna's bicentenary memorial tablet in Carlisle Cathedral on 20 March 1994, said: 'We might be listening to Byron's Prisoner of Chillon.' Some evidence for this attribution is as follows: Blamire's half-sister, Bridget (1757-1832), offspring of Susanna Blamire's father's second marriage, took a huge interest in Susanna's poetic manuscripts, some of which she had prepared for publication. She married George Brown, a lawyer and Freeman of the City of Newcastle-on-Tyne. Following his premature death in 1795, she established Newbottle School, at Houghton-le Spring, County Durham, six miles from Anabella Milbanke’s house in Seaham. It is quite possible that Byron could have read a manuscript or a transcript of Blamire's poems whilst at Seaham Manor, immediately after his marriage to Milbanke in 1815. Also, Bridget's son, William, (born 1787) was a tutor to Annabella until shortly after her marriage to Byron in 1815. Another interesting connection was through Susanna's niece Mary née Blamire and her husband, The Revd Thomas Young [my great x2 grandparents], who was educated with William Wordsworth at Hawkshead Grammar School and later was Senior Tutor at Trinity College, Cambridge (from 1806) during Byron's time as an undergraduate there. Young came from a statesman's family at Cumdivock, Near Carlisle, only three miles from The Blamire's family house, The Oaks, at Dalston and six miles from Thackwood Manor, where Susanna and her nephew, William Blamire MP, High Sheriff and Chief Tithe Commissioner had lived. So, it is certainly possible that an academic like Young, living so closely in a rural community would have known of or read Susanna's writings. The Byron Scholar, Professor Jerome McGann, University of Virginia, believed: ‘It seems quite possible that Susanna’s poem was in Byron’s mind when he wrote The Prisoner of Chillon.’. Reception of Poetry Charles Dickens in his The Old Curiosity Shop (1841, end of chapter 66) had quoted its first two lines: " 'Sir' said Dick (Swiveller), ... 'we'll make a scholar of the poor Marchioness yet! And