Elizabeth was born on 11 September 1674 at Ilchester in Somerset. Her father was Walter Singer, a minister of an Independent church; her mother was Elizabeth Portnell. Walter was in prison for dissent, and Elizabeth was bringing supplies to him and those imprisoned with him. After he was released, they were married, but he resigned from the ministry and became a clothier.
Elizabeth Singer was eighteen when her mother died. The family had connections with the upper classes. Elizabeth was tutored by Henry Thynne, son of the first Viscount Weymouth of Longleat, Wiltshire. Several men courted her, including Isaac Watts. However, she married the poet Thomas Rowe in 1710. Thomas died five years later; Elizabeth left London where they had been living and returned to Frome to live with her father. He too died in 1719.
Elizabeth inherited invested wealth. Each year she would give half of the income away. She had begun writing poetry when she was twelve years old. Poems on Several Occasions was published by John Dunton when she was 22. By far her best known work was Friendship in Death: Twenty Letters From the Dead to the Living, which came out in 1728. This went through over eighty editions in the next hundred years, and easily outsold Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe throughout the 18th century!
