poet, born near Newbury, the daughter of Sir William Kingsmill, and orphaned when young. In 1684 she married Colonel Heneage Finch, who succeeded to the title in 1712. She was a friend of Pope, Swift, Gay, and Rowe. Her Miscellany Poems on Several Occasions (1713) were admired by Wordsworth, who chose a selection for an album (1819). Her best‐known poem is her ode, ‘The Spleen: A Pindaric Poem’; her couplet about the jonquil and ‘aromatic pain’ was echoed by Pope in his Essay on Man. V. Woolf in A Room of One's Own (1928) concluded that she ‘suffered terribly from melancholy’. Many of her poems have appeared in anthologies and selections.