Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Lucas Malet
-
Standard Name: Malet, Lucas
Birth Name: Mary St Leger Kingsley
Married Name: Mary St Leger Harrison
Married Name: M. St L. Harrison
Pseudonym: Lucas Malet
Nickname: Polly
LM
, author of eighteen novels in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was a great admirer of French fiction. Her books are hard to classify generically, having elements of the sensation novel (adultery, illicit sex, indirect murder, female protagonists who are heartlessly self-seeking), of satire, psychological analysis, and social protest. She breaks the taboos of genteel English fiction by lifting the lid of respectable life to reveal its members as engaged a in cut-throat struggle for status or survival. Her Times obituary stated that her place in literary history was secure.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
Much to her father's delight, the younger daughter, Mary St Leger Kingsley
(called Polly by her family), was courted by William Harrison
, Kingsley's curate and close friend. She married Harrison in July 1876, the...
Family and Intimate relationships
Mary Kingsley
A cousin of Mary, who was ten years older and shared the same first name (Mary St Leger Kingsley, a daughter of the Rev. Charles Kingsley and of Fanny Kingsley
) became an author, but...
Family and Intimate relationships
Charlotte Chanter
A daughter, Louisa Mary, was born to the Kingsley family in 1824, but died as an infant, before Charlotte was born. The writers Lucas Malet
and Mary Kingsley
were both Charlotte's nieces.
Chitty, Susan. The Beast and The Monk: A Life of Charles Kingsley. Hodder and Stoughton, 1974.
26-8
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
MBL
was an early member of Mary Cholmondeley
's Give and Take Club
for women writers, and a founding member of another women's luncheon club, the Thirty
. This included women from all walks of...
Friends, Associates
Emma Marshall
Her daughter mentions among EM
's friends the gifted Frances Bunnett
(who published her translations as F. E. Bunnett), Frances Alleyne
(also a translator, as S. [Sarah] F. Alleyne), and Frances Mary Owen
Publishing
Mary Angela Dickens
MAD
's interview A Talk with Lucas Malet appeared in The Windsor Magazine: For Men and Women.
Dickens, Mary Angela. “A Chat with Lucas Malet”. The Windsor Magazine: For Men and Women, Vol.
10
, No. 4, Sept. 1899, pp. 522-4.
522-4
Residence
Fanny Kingsley
In June 1878, Queen Victoria
offered FK
rooms at Hampton Court Palace, which she declined. FK
lived in a sixteenth-century manor house at Tachbrook Mallory in Warwickshire for the rest of her life. The...
Textual Features
Mona Caird
In The Duel of the Sexes, MC
expresses regret that some of those who had benefited from the women's movement had done nothing to support it and tended to cry down women: she cited...
23 January 1875: Charles Kingsley, clergyman and novelist,...
Writing climate item
23 January 1875
Charles Kingsley
, clergyman and novelist, husband of Fanny Kingsley
and father of Mary St Leger Kingsley (who later wrote as Lucas Malet
), died at Eversley, Hampshire.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
32
Texts
Malet, Lucas. “A Conversion”. World Fiction, pp. 64-76.
Malet, Lucas. A Counsel of Perfection. Kegan Paul, 1888.
Malet, Lucas. Adrian Savage. Hutchinson, 1911, p. xii, 432 pp.