a Welsh poet who wrote in English, who is notable as a correspondent of The Gentleman's Magazine. Brereton possessed talents for versification, if not for poetry, which she displayed for some years as a correspondent to The Gentleman's Magazine, under the signature Melissa. There she had a competitor who signed himself FIDO and is supposed to have been Thomas Beach. After her death a volume of her Poems on Several Occasions; with letters to her friends; and an account of her life, was published in London in 1744. A number of her poems were reprinted in subsequent collections.
