Eleanor Sleath and "The Orphan of the Rhine"
Gothic morality, religion, and rational sensibility
Born in 1770, the youngest of five children, Eleanor Carter is best known for the first of her six novels, The Orphan of the Rhine, which was famously included as one of Jane Austen’s horrid novels in Northanger Abbey. Her father, Thomas Carter, was one of five brothers who qualified as country attorneys, eventually settling in Loughborough. When he died in 1773, without leaving a will, his widow and eldest brother administered the estate. Eleanor married Joseph Sleath in 1792 at the age of twenty-one, but by the age of twenty-four, she was a widow. Her second marriage to John Dudley was in 1823, following the death of his wife. Contrary to initial assumptions, she was not Catholic, even though she portrays Catholicism in a positive light in her novel.