Charlotte Riddell

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CR was a prolific professional novelist and story writer during the latter half of the nineteenth century. She published forty novels, plus tales (in journals, annuals, and her own collections), two travel books, and essays in periodicals. She was best-known in her own day for her domestic novels, sensation novels, and local and mystery novels. She has become more prominent in recent times for her highly-regarded ghost stories. She is unusual both in her depictions of the male-only business and financial aspects of London life, and in choosing lyrical country settings from the immediate area of London, both to the north-east and the south-west.
  • BirthName: Charlotte Elizabeth Lawson Cowan
    Her second name is sometimes given as Eliza.

  • Married: Riddell; Mrs J. H. Riddell
  • Pseudonyms: Rainey Hawthorne; R. V. M. Sparling; F. G. Trafford
  • Indexed: Charlotte Elizabeth L. Riddell
    CR used this full form of her name on her travel book about walking in Germany.
"Historic Buildings of the London Borough of Haringey" green plaque at St Ann's Hospital, Tottenham, London, reading: "Charlotte Riddell 1832-1906 Gothic novelist lived at 'St John's Lodge' that once stood here 1863-1873."

Milestones

30 September 1832

Charlotte Elizabeth Lawson Cowan (later CR ) was born at The Barnin Carrickfergus, County Antrim, in the blacknorth of Ireland (as she later called it), the youngest daughter in her family.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
qtd. in
Black, Helen C. Notable Women Authors of the Day. D. Bryce, 1893.
14

1864

CR again used the pseudonym F. G. Trafford for her successful George Geith of Fen Court, A Novel, although with yet another different publisher.
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
1947 (1865): 233

6 August 1877

Wybert Reeve 's dramatisation of CR 's George Geith was produced at the Theatre Royal at the holiday resort of Scarborough, with Reeve in the title role.
Ellis, Stewart Marsh. Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu, and Others. Books for Libraries Press, 1931.
281n1

1900

CR 's final publication was a full-length novel, The Footfall of Fate, set around Chertsey in Surrey.
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.
Ellis, Stewart Marsh. Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu, and Others. Books for Libraries Press, 1931.
321

24 September 1906

CR died in her seventies, of her terrible and painful breast cancer,
Ellis, Stewart Marsh. Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu, and Others. Books for Libraries Press, 1931.
267
at Hounslow in Middlesex. It was her forty-ninth wedding anniversary.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Family

30 September 1832

Charlotte Elizabeth Lawson Cowan (later CR ) was born at The Barnin Carrickfergus, County Antrim, in the blacknorth of Ireland (as she later called it), the youngest daughter in her family.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
qtd. in
Black, Helen C. Notable Women Authors of the Day. D. Bryce, 1893.
14

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