Catherine Cuthbertson
-
is a fairly conventional novelist of the early nineteenth century. Her seven novels have historically realised settings (often in continental Europe), and happy endings for virtuous upper-class characters. The lower classes (often Irish) provide comic relief, until they engage in rebellion, when they arouse horror. She may probably be the author of a play performed in 1793 as well.
- BirthName: Catherine Cuthbertson
- Pseudonyms: The Author of the Romance of the Pyrenees; The Author of Santo Sebastiano; The Author of the Hut and the Castle
Biography
An Obscure Life
The date of
's birth (as one of probably at least four siblings) is not known. Guesses are complicated by uncertainty whether her first work appeared in 1793 or 1802. In any event she was probably born before (perhaps long before) 1780. A number of babies were christened with this name in England and Scotland during about the right period, but none is conclusively the novelist. As an army officer's daughter, she might have been born abroad.