WINCHELSEA, ANNE FINCH, COUNTESS OF (1661 1720), English author, daughter of Sir William Kingsmill of Sid monton, near Southampton, was born in April 1661. In 1683, Anne was one of the maids of honour of Mary of Modena, duchess of York. She married in 1684 Col. Heneage Finch, who in 1712, on the death of his nephew Charles, became the 5th earl of Win chelsea. The countess of Winchelsea died in London on Aug. 5, 1720. Anne Finch's poems contain many copies of verse ad dressed to her friends and contemporaries. She was to some ex tent a follower of the "matchless Orinda" in the fervour of her friendships. During her lifetime she published her poem "The Spleen" in Gildon's Miscellany (1701) and a volume of Poems in 1713 which included a tragedy called Aristomenes.
Edmund Gosse wrote a notice of her poems for T. H. Ward's English Poets (vol. iii., 188o) , and in 1884 came into possession of a ms. volume of her poems. A complete edition of her verse, The Poems of Anne, Countess of Winchilsea, was edited by Myra Reynolds (Chicago, 1903) with an exhaustive essay, and a new edition by John Middleton Murry (1928). See also E. Gosse. Gossip in a Library (1891), and E. Dowden, Essays, Modern and Elizabethan, Words worth's anthology for Lady Mary Lowther was first printed in i9o5 (Oxford). Some of her work remains in ms. in the possession of Pro fessor Dowden.