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At the Circulating Library

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

Author: Eleanor Ashworth Towle

Author: Eleanor Ashworth Towle (1847–1911)

Alternate Name(s): Taylor (maiden name); E. M. Archer (pseudonym)

Biography: Eleanor Emma Ashworth Towle was born in 1847 in Mortlake, Surrey, the eldest daughter of Sir Henry Taylor (1800–1886) and Theodosia Alice Spring-Rice (d. 1891), herself the daughter of Lord Monteagle. Her father was a poet, author of Philip Van Arteveide (1834), and civil servant in the colonial department. The household was "pre-eminently a happy one" and the host of dozens of literary and artistic celebrities including Julia Cameron, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dodgson, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and G. F. Watts (who painted her mother). She began her own literary career with the novel Christina North (1872) under the pseudonym "E. M. Archer" and went on to write another six novels. In addition, she wrote a number of memoirs, including A Poet's Children: Hartley and Sara Coleridge (1912). Her two younger sisters, Ida Ashworth Taylor and Una Ashworth Taylor, also wrote novels. In 1875 she married Charles Seymour Towle (1843–1908), the vicar of Moordown, and later the vicar of St. Clement's, Bournemouth. He died in 1908 in Bournemouth and she died in 1911 in Freshwater Bay.

Author Tags:

References: British Census (1881, 1891, 1901); DNB (Sir Henry Taylor); Times (12 April 1911)

Fiction Titles:

  1. Christina North.  2 vol.  London: Macmillan, 1872.
  2. Under the Limes.  2 vol.  London: Macmillan, 1874.
  3. My Sister Rosalind.  2 vol.  London: Henry S. King, 1876.
  4. Master Bobby.  1 vol.  London: Kegan Paul, 1879.
  5. A Golden Bar.  3 vol.  London: Hurst and Blackett, 1882.
  6. Betwixt my Love and Me.  2 vol.  London: Hurst and Blackett, 1885.
  7. Virginia Tennant.  2 vol.  London: Hurst and Blackett, 1888.