Dorothy Boulger

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DB 's writings spanned many forms and genres during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. She published a large number of novels (which include the semi-autobiographical), short stories, ghost stories, and adapted fairy stories, young people's fiction, children's books (some collaborative), and worked extensively in journalism. Some of her fiction uses as setting the Falkland Islands, where she grew up.
  • BirthNames: Dorothy Henrietta Havers
  • Nickname: Dora
  • Married: Boulger
  • Pseudonym: Theo Gift
    Since Dorothy (and Dorothea or Theodora) means gift of God, DB based her pseudonym closely on her actual name. She often spelt it with a full stop after Theo.

Title page from the US edition of Dorothy Boulger's best-remembered novel, "Pretty Miss Bellew", 1875, published under the pseudonym "Theo. Gift". It bears the owl logo of the publisher Henry Holt and Company, New York (now subsumed in Macmillan).

Milestones

30 May 1847

Dorothy Henrietta Havers (later DB ) was born at Thelton Hall in Norfolk.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1875

Dorothy Havers (later DB ) published under her pseudonym, Theo Gift, her best-remembered novel, Pretty Miss Bellew, in three volumes.
The US edition was subtitled A Tale of Home Life.
“Melvyl Catalogue of the University of California Libraries”. California Digital Library (CDL).
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.

1901

Theo Gift (DB ) published her final book, The Case of a Man with his Wife.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

22 July 1923

DB died in her seventies at 26 Cathcart Road in South Kensington, London.
The year is sometimes incorrectly given as 1889.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Who Was Who. A. and C. Black, 1897–2025, Many volumes.

Biography

Birth and Background

30 May 1847

Dorothy Henrietta Havers (later DB ) was born at Thelton Hall in Norfolk.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

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