Dora Greenwell

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A mid-Victorian writer of great versatility, DG published four books of religious discourse, nine collections of poetry, two volumes of essays, and two biographies. She occasionally contributed to periodicals, both her own prose as well as translations, and she edited a number of short stories.
Gray, Janet. “Dora Greenwell’s Commonplace Book”. Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol.
57
, No. 1, pp. 47-74.
49
Much of her writing was religious in subject or motivation. Her poetry dealt with contemporary concerns such as the position of women, as did her prose, in which her topics also included the education of people with disabilities and the abolition of slavery.

Milestones

6 December 1821

DG was born at Greenwell Ford, Lanchester, Durham, one of five children and her parents' only daughter.
Bett, Henry. Dora Greenwell. Epworth Press.
11, 13

1860

One of DG 's most popular works appeared, a volume of religious essays titled The Patience of Hope, dedicated to Josephine Butler ; she referred to herself allusively as the author of A Present Heaven (issued five years before).
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

1869

DG produced Carmina Crucis or Songs of the Cross, a collection of devotional poetry containing some of her best-known compositions.
Armstrong, Isobel et al., editors. Nineteenth-Century Women Poets. Clarendon Press.
438
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

29 March 1882

DG died at 7 Oakfield Road, Clifton, after several years of ill health and depression.
W. Robertson Nicoll , writing a few years after the event, said that DG was still living in London at the time of her death.
Nicoll, William Robertson. “Dora Greenwell”. Good Words, Vol.
27
, pp. 106-9.
109
Dorling, William. Memoirs of Dora Greenwell. James Clarke.
230, 233, 244
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.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Though Dorothy was her given name, she was invariably known as Dora.
Dorling, William. Memoirs of Dora Greenwell. James Clarke.
1

Birth

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