Author: Pardoe, Julia
Biography:
PARDOE, Julia (1804-62: ODNB)
She was baptised Julia Sophia Pardoe on 4 Dec. 1804 at St. John and St. Martin, Beverley, Yorkshire, the second daughter of Elizabeth (Marsingale) and Thomas Pardoe, who had married in Beverley on 18 Dec. 1799. The details of her education are not known but she acquired some modern languages and began writing poems in her teens. Her first collection, The Nun, was published anonymously and dedicated to her uncle William Pardoe, a naval officer. She never married and worked hard as a freelance writer all her life to support an extended family, but she struggled against ill health: consumption was feared, though it is now believed to have been liver disease that killed her in the end. (Death notices at the time blamed “congestion of the brain.”) In search of health she was taken to warmer countries, among them Portugal, Turkey, and Hungary—all of which she wrote about in a series of well-received travel books. Based for a time in London, she contributed to periodicals and annuals and kept up a steady output of novels and shorter fiction, starting with Lord Morcar of Hereward in 1829. In 1846 a Philadelphia publisher brought out five volumes purporting to be her Complete Works but containing in fact only a set of her novels. About 1842 she left London to live more quietly with her parents in Gravesend, Kent, and later at Northfleet. Some of her best work followed, in non-fiction prose, especially French history and biography—Louis the Fourteenth (1847), The Court and Reign of Francis the First (1849), The Life of Marie de Médicis (1852). In four successful applications to the RLF 1844-59 she received a total of £225; the letters of application and supporting documents contain many details of her arrangements with her publisher and her financial situation generally. She was granted a civil-list pension of £100 p.a. for services to literature in 1860. She died on 26 Nov. 1862 at her London home, 24 Upper Montagu Street, and was buried on 2 Dec. at Kensal Green. (ODNB 16 Aug. 2023; Orlando 16 Aug. 2023; ancestry.com 16 Aug. 2023; RLF #1102; Morning Post 12 Dec. 1862) HJ