found: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, via WWW, March 19, 2014(West [née Iliffe], Jane (1758-1852), writer and poet, was born on 30 April 1758 in London, the only child of Jane and John Iliffe; by 1783 she had married Thomas West (d. 1823), a yeoman farmer from neighbouring Little Bowden, Leicestershire; her first novel was The Advantages of Education (1793), written under the pseudonym Prudentia Homespun; this was followed by what is now her best-known novel, A Gossip's Story (1796), also published under the facetious pseudonym; her third novel was A Tale of the Times (1799); West's other novels include The Infidel Father (1802), The Refusal (1810), The Loyalists: an Historical Novel (1812), and Alicia de Lacy: an Historical Romance (4 vols., 1814), Ringrove, or, Old Fashioned Notions (1827) was her last novel; a children's story, The Sorrows of Selfishness by Prudentia Homespun, has also been identified as the work of West; her poetic works include Miscellaneous Poetry, Written at an Early Period of Life (1786), The Humours of Brighthelmstone: a Poem (1788); Miscellaneous Poems and a Tragedy ['Edmund'] (1791), An Elegy on the Death of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (1797), Poems and Plays (vols. 1 and 2, 1799; 3 and 4, 1805), and The Mother: a Poem in Five Books (1799); Miscellaneous Poems, Translations and Imitations (1780), previously attributed to her, is now known to be the work of Benjamin West; she also wrote Select Translations of the Beauties of Massillon (1812) and Scriptural Essays Adapted to the Holy Days of the Church of England (2 vols., 1816); West was also a contributor for many years to the Gentleman's Magazine; she died on 25 March 1852 at Little Bowden)
