CHAPONE, HESTER English essayist, daughter of Thomas Mulso, a country gentleman, was born at Twywell, Northamptonshire, on Oct. 27, 5727. At the age of nine she wrote a romance entitled The Loves of Amoret and Melissa. While on a visit to Canterbury she met the learned Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, and then became one of the little court of women who gathered at North End, Fulham, around Samuel Richardson, and in Miss Susannah Highmore's sketch of the novelist reading Sir Charles Grandison to his friends Miss Mulso is the central figure. In 1760 Miss Mulso, with her father's reluc tant consent, married the attorney, John Chapone, who had been befriended by Richardson. Her husband died within a year of her marriage. Her best known work, Letters on the Improvement of the Mind (17 7 2) brought her numerous requests from distin guished persons to undertake the education of their children. She died on Dec. 25, 18o1.
See The Posthumous Works of Mrs. Chapone, containing her corre spondence with Mr. Richardson; a series of letters to Mrs. Elizabeth Carter . . . together with an account of her life and character drawn up by her own family (4 vols. 1807) •