(bapt. 23 September 1828 – 10 May 1899) was a British children's writer and illustrator, perhaps best known for her

adventure novel Adventure fiction is a type of fiction that usually presents danger, or gives the reader a sense of excitement. Some adventure fiction also satisfies the literary definition of romance fiction. History In the Introduction to the ''Encyclopedi ...

''Left to Themselves: A Boy's Adventure in Australia'' (1878) – later published as ''The Young Lamberts''. The novel is set in Australia, but she is not known to have ever visited the continent.

Life

Marryat was born in

Fulham Fulham () is an area of the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham in West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, bordering Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea. The area faces Wandsworth ...

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

, England, the daughter of

Frederick Marryat Captain Frederick Marryat (10 July 1792 – 9 August 1848) was a Royal Navy officer, a novelist, and an acquaintance of Charles Dickens. He is noted today as an early pioneer of nautical fiction, particularly for his semi-autobiographical novel ...

and his wife Catherine (''née'' Shairp). Captain Marryat was a successful popular novelist and two of Augusta's sisters,

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

and

Emilia Emilia may refer to: People * Emilia (given name), list of people with this name Places * Emilia (region), a historical region of Italy. Reggio, Emilia * Emilia-Romagna, an administrative region in Italy, including the historical regions of Emi ...

, also became writers. Augusta wrote adventure fiction heavily infused with morality in her father's vein, and Florence was a prolific author of sensationalist novels who also acquired a reputation for hanging out with spiritual mediums. She died in Surrey in 1899.

Selected works

* ''Lost in the Jungle: A Story of the

Indian Mutiny The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the fo ...

'' (London: Griffith and Farran, 1877). * ''Left to Themselves: A Boy's Adventures in Australia'' (London: Frederick Warne, 1878). * ''The Reverse of the Shield: or, The Adventures of Grenville Le Marchant during the Franco-Prussian War (''London: Frederick Warne, 1879) A full bibliography is available in ''The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: 1800-1900'', Vol. 4.

References

External links

* (no catalogue records December 2018) {{DEFAULTSORT:Marryat, Augusta 19th-century English novelists Victorian novelists Victorian women writers English women novelists 1828 births 1899 deaths 19th-century English women writers 19th-century British writers