Author: Stewart, Elizabeth Margaret
Biography:
STEWART, Elizabeth Margaret (1812-82: ancestry.co.uk)
She was born on 24 Jan. 1812 at Cannon Street Road, Wapping, and baptised on 19 Feb. at St. George’s in the East, London, the eldest of seven children of Duncan Stewart and Sarah Croft, who had married in 1811. Her sisters were novelists: Agnes Magdalene Stewart (1816-87), Mary Clementina Hibbert-Ware (1835-1911). Her brother Douglas Duncan Stewart (1832-1911) was a novelist, journalist, and sometime publisher. She was a committed Catholic and The Shrine (1834) prefigures many of the religious preoccupations of her later novels of which there were over fifteen. She published a further volume of verse, Original Poetry for Young Persons (1848), and also appended more Catholic verse to her popular and respected Victims of the Penal Laws (1878). The 1851 census records her living at 10 Brook Street, Lambeth, south London, with her father, a “Professor of Oriental Languages.” He had earlier published a highly-regarded Practical Arabic Grammar (1841) but held no academic post . He had also failed as a merchant and applied to the RLF for assistance, receiving three awards totalling £60 (1847-50). Later applications (1857-60) were declined. Three of the children also applied: Agnes Magdalene, Douglas, and Elizabeth Margaret who was rarely paid more than £35 for a novel but received £135 from the RLF (1846-62). By 1866 she had acquired the reputation of “a confirmed Begging Letter Writer” and in 1877 was informed there would be no further awards. Her lengthy accounts of her publishing disappointments are, however, worth another look. In the 1870s, her brother Douglas, sometime publisher at Red Lion Court, Fleet Street, and Pasternoster Row, St. Paul’s, reprinted three of her most popular works: Lord Dacre of Gilsland (1843), Rodenhurst (1845), and Victims of the Penal Laws (1878). He too made multiple applications to the RLF and in 1880 after a series of fraudulent begging letters to Sarah Louisa Josefa, Lady Grey, and others, he received a twelve-month prison sentence. She died on 11 Feb. 1882 at 114 Penton Place, Lambeth, south London, with her occupation given as authoress, and her sister-in-law, Annette, in attendance. (ancestry.co.uk 4 Sept. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 4 Sept. 2024; RLF #1138, #1240 (sister), #1161 (brother), #1164 (father); The Catholic Directory and Annual Register [1838], 21; Tablet 25 Feb., 3 June 1882; GRO death cert.; Southwark Mercury 20 Mar. 1880; LES 15 Sept. 1880) AA
Other Names:
- Elizabeth M. Stewart