Ella Fuller Maitland
Born
Ella Sophia Mary Chester

(1857-01-08)January 8, 1857
DiedNovember 15, 1939(1939-11-15) (aged 82)
Occupation(s)Writer and poet
Parent

Ella Fuller Maitland (née Ella Sophia Mary Chester; 8 January 1857-15 November 1939)[1][2][3] was a British novelist and poet,[4][5] who had considerable success as a writer in the 1890s.[6][7]

Life

Ella Sophia Mary Chester was born in London on 8 January 1857, the daughter of Harry Chester,[8] a civil servant and the founder of the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution. She married Robert Fuller-Maitland, and the couple lived in Sidmouth, Devon.[8] She was a member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals, and a number of other animal charities.[9][3]

Maitland published Pages from the Day-book of Bethia Hardacre in 1895, encouraged by Frederick Greenwood.[7] The Times wrote:

It is easier to say what Bethia Hardacre is not than what it is. It is not a novel, because there is no story; we do not say there are no characters. It is not a "commonplace book," because there is nothing commonplace about it; on the contrary, it is strikingly original. Nor is it, as might be assumed from the antiquated Christian name Bethia, a réchauffé of the too familiar, imaginary reminiscences of the Elizabethan period or the Civil Wars. Nor can the book be commended in the ordinary fashion. No higher praise can be bestowed on the sensational or shocking novel of the times than that when you take it up it is impossible to lay it down. But we are always laying down "Bethia Hardacre" as it lulls us into pleasant day-dreams or tempts us to speculative reverie... It mirrors the mind of a cultured woman, with a pure and sensitive poetical taste... There are touches of deep pathos with a genial cynicism which is sensibly sharpened by its evident truth.[10]

1899's The Etchingham Letters, written with Sir Frederick Pollock, was an epistolary novel.[11] Godfrey Frank Singer wrote that:

in The Etchingham Letters (1899), we find a literary correspondence which... is a collaboration. The authors are Sir Frederick Pollock and Ella Fuller Maitland. The two do not seem to have made any obvious division of labor, but to have written together in all the letters regardless of the pretended writer. There is a definite eighteenth-century tone to this book.[12]

Death

Ella Fuller Maitland died on 15 November 1939.[3] In her will, she left £500 to the National Trust; £300 to the RSPCA; £300 to the Men of the Trees: £209 to Our Dumb Friends League; £200 to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds; and £200 to the Council for the Preservation of Rural England.[3]

Works

  • Parva [poems] (1886)
  • Verse: rustic and elegiac (1890)
  • Pages from the Day-book of Bethia Hardacre (1895)
  • The Saltonstall Gazette (1896)
  • The Song-book of Bethia Hardacre (1897)
  • The Etchingham Letters with Sir Frederick Pollock (1898)
  • Blanche Esmead: a Story of Diverse Temperaments (1906)
  • More Pages from the Day-book of Bethia Hardacre (1907)
  • By Land and Water (1911)
  • The Clere Family: 1927-1928 with R. Spence Bernard (1929)

References

  1. ↑ Maitland, Fuller. "Ella Fuller Maitland - Wikisource, the free online library". en.wikisource.org. Retrieved 2022-11-22.
  2. ↑ Maitland, Ella Sophia Mary Fuller. "Essex Monumental Inscriptions". FindMyPast.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Deaths". The Times. 13 January 1940. p. 9.
  4. ↑ "Ella Fuller Maitland (née Chester) - National Portrait Gallery". www.npg.org.uk. Retrieved 2022-11-22.
  5. ↑ Who was who among English and European authors, 1931-1949 : based on entries which first appeared in The Author's and writer's who's who & reference guide originally compiled by Edward Martell and L.G. Pine. Internet Archive. Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1978.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  6. ↑ "Maitland, Ella Fuller (F)". dvpp.uvic.ca. Retrieved 2022-11-22.
  7. 1 2 Robertson Scott, J. W. (John William) (1971). The story of the Pall Mall gazette, of the first editor Frederick Greenwood, and of its founder George Murray Smith. Internet Archive. Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-8371-5826-6.
  8. 1 2 Reilly, Catherine W. (1994). Late Victorian poetry, 1880-1899 : an annotated biobibliography. Internet Archive. London ; New York : Mansell. ISBN 978-0-7201-2001-1.
  9. ↑ Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Annual report. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Horsham, West Sussex : The Society.
  10. ↑ "Recent Novels". The Times. 23 July 1895. p. 5.
  11. ↑ Twentieth century authors : a biographical dictionary of modern literature. Internet Archive. New York : The H.W. Wilson Cmpany. 1942. ISBN 978-0-8242-0049-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  12. ↑ "VII. The Epistolary Novel in England since 1800", The Epistolary Novel, University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 156–180, 1933-12-31, doi:10.9783/9781512806984-008, ISBN 978-1-5128-0698-4, retrieved 2023-11-13
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