Elizabeth Meeke

Elizabeth Meeke (13 November 1761 – c. October 1826) was a prolific English author, translator and children's writer, and the stepsister of Frances Burney. She wrote about 30 novels, published by the Minerva Press in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Identity

The novels appeared mainly under the name Mrs. Meeke, sometimes under the pseudonym Gabrielli, and a few anonymously. Their author was once assumed to be Mary Meeke, the wife of a Staffordshire vicar, but "Mrs. Meeke" was conclusively identified as Elizabeth Meeke in an article by Simon Macdonald in 2013.[1] She is thought to have died in about October 1826.[2]

Fiction

Meeke's debut novel was Count St Blanchard in 1795. Others include The Abbey of Clugny, The Mysterious Wife, Anecdotes of the Altamont Family and Which is the Man? Her works include several translations from French, such as Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia.

The third edition of Chamber's Cyclopaedia of English Literature in 1903 disparaged her work:

The novels are worthless and would be quite forgotten but for the mention of them in the Life of Macaulay, who in his younger days at least "all but knew them by heart". According to Macaulay's sister the most of them turn on the fortunes of some young man in a very low rank of life who ultimately proves to be the son of a duke.[3]

Current evaluations are not so dismissive. Anthony Mandai describes Meeke as "the most prolific novelist of the age," and argues for her complicated, yet central, role as a professional author through the watershed decades during which she wrote.[4]

Bibliography

Novels

  • Count St. Blancard, or the Prejudiced Judge (1795)
  • The Abbey of Clugny (1795)
  • Palmira and Ermance (1797)
  • The Mysterious Wife (as by Gabrielli) (1797)
  • The Sicilian (anonymous) (1798)
  • Harcourt (anonymous) (1799)
  • Ellesmere (1799)
  • Anecdotes of the Altamont Family (anonymous) (1800)
  • Which is the Man? (1801)
  • The Mysterious Husband (as by Gabrielli) (1801)
  • Midnight Weddings (1802)
  • Independence (as by Gabrielli) (1802)
  • Amazement! (1804)
  • The Old Wife and the Young Husband (1804)
  • The Nine Days' Wonder (1804)
  • Something Odd! (anonymous) (1804)
  • The Wonder of the Village (anonymous) (1805)
  • Something Strange (as by Gabrielli) (1806)
  • "There Is a Secret, Find It Out!" (1808)
  • Langhton Priory (as by Gabrielli) (1809)
  • Stratagems Defeated (as by Gabrielli) (1811)
  • Matrimony, the Height of Bliss or Extreme of Misery (1811)
  • Conscience (1814)
  • Spanish Campaigns, or The Jew (1815)
  • The Veiled Protectress, or the Mysterious Mother (1818)
  • What Shall Be, Shall Be (1823)

Translations

Children's books

  • The Birth-Day Present
  • Mamma's Gift
  • The Parent's Offering to a Good Child

References
  1. Anthony Mandal, "Mrs. Meeke and Minerva: The Mystery of the Marketplace". In Eighteenth-Century Life Vol. 42, No. 2, April 2018, pp. 131–151.
  2. Macdonald, Simon (2013). "Meeke, Elizabeth (1761–1826?)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/18509. Retrieved 12 March 2015. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. Chambers, Cyclopaedia of English Literature, 1903, Vol. 3, p. 178.
  4. Mandai, Anthony. "Mrs. Meeke and Minerva: the mystery of the marketplace." Eighteenth-Century Life. Volume 42, Number 2, April 2018.

Sources
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