Elizabeth Isabella Spence

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EIS began publishing just before the end of the eighteenth century and continued for twenty-five years. She issued novels, shorter fiction, and travel books, the latter put together from letters sent to friends in the course of summer excursions around England, Wales, and Scotland (her native country). Her fiction sometimes draws on anecdotes from life, both recent and historical or pseudo-historical. As an author she is not distinguished, but her interest in circulating information about other women writers gives her some significance for women's literary history.

Milestones

12 January 1768

EIS was born, an only child, at Dunkeld in Perth, Scotland, where her father was then practising medicine.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1827

EIS published, anonymously, her final novel, Dame Rebecca Berry, or, Court Scenes in the Reign of Charles The Second.
Spence, Elizabeth Isabella. Dame Rebecca Berry. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green .
prelims

27 July 1832

EIS died in Chelsea of a stroke which had paralysed her.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Family

12 January 1768

EIS was born, an only child, at Dunkeld in Perth, Scotland, where her father was then practising medicine.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.