Eliza Lynn Linton
| Eliza Lynn Linton | |
|---|---|
Portrait of Eliza Lynn Linton, by W. & D. Downey, 1890
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| Born | Eliza Lynn 10 February 1822 Keswick, Cumbria, England |
| Died | 14 July 1898 (aged 76) Westminster, London |
| Occupation | Novelist, |
| Period | Victorian |
| Spouse | William James Linton |
| Relatives | James Lynn (father), Charlotte Alicia Lynn (mother) |
Eliza Lynn Linton (10 February 1822 – 14 July 1898) was the first female salaried journalist in Britain, and the author of over 20 novels. Despite her path breaking role as an independent woman, many of her essays took a strong anti-feminist slant.
Eliza Lynn Linton was born in Keswick, Cumbria, England, the daughter of the Rev. J. Lynn, vicar of Crosthwaite, and granddaughter of a bishop of Carlisle. The death of her mother when Eliza was five months old led to a chaotic upbringing, in which she was largely self-educated; but in 1845 she left home to earn her living as a writer in London.
After moving to Paris, she married W. J. Linton in 1858, an eminent wood-engraver, who was also a poet of some note, a writer upon his craft, and a Chartist agitator. She moved into his ramshackle house, Brantwood, in the Lakes, with his seven children from his earlier marriage, and wrote her Cumbrian novel Lizzie Lorton of Greyrigg there. In 1867 the couple separated in a friendly way, the husband going to America, Eliza going back to her life as a London writer.
She returned briefly to Cumbria and to her childhood home in 1889, to feel “half in a dream here. It is Keswick and yet not Keswick, as I am Eliza Lynn and yet not Eliza Lynn”.
She usually lived in London, but about three years before her death retired to Brougham House, Malvern. She died at Queen Anne's Mansions, London, on 14 July 1898, and her ashes were scattered in the Crosthwaite churchyard.
Linton arrived in London in 1845 as the protégée of poet Walter Savage Landor. In the following year she produced her first novel, Azeth, the Egyptian, which was succeeded by Amymone (1848), and Realities (1851), followed. None of these had any great success, and she became a journalist, joining the staff of the Morning Chronicle, and Household Words.
After separating from her husband, Linton returned to writing novels, in which she finally attained wide popularity. Her most successful works were The True History of Joshua Davidson (1872), Patricia Kemball (1874), and The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland (1885), the latter being in fact a thinly disguised autobiography.
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