Adeline Sergeant (4 July 1851 – 4 December 1904) was an English writer.
Life
Born Emily Frances Adeline Sergeant at
Ashbourne, Derbyshire, the second daughter of Richard Sergeant and Jane (Hall),
she was home schooled until the age of thirteen, when she attended school in
Weston-super-Mare
Weston-super-Mare, also known simply as Weston, is a seaside town in North Somerset, England. It lies by the Bristol Channel south-west of Bristol between Worlebury Hill and Bleadon Hill. It includes the suburbs of Mead Vale, Milton, Oldmix ...
. Her mother was a writer of stories for youngsters that were published under the pen name 'Adeline'; Emily later adopted this name for her own writings.
At fifteen a collection of Emily's poems were published in a volume that received positive notice in Weslayan periodicals. She won a scholarship to attend
Queen's College, London. Her father died in 1870, and for several years she became a governess at
Riverhead, Kent
Riverhead is a northern village part of the urban area of Sevenoaks in the district of the same name in Kent, England and is also a civil parish. The parish had a population in 2001 of 1821, increasing to 2,634 at the 2011 Census.
The parish s ...
.
In 1882, her novel ''Jacobi's wife'' resulted in a small award of £100,
and the work was published serially in London. For the next several years her writings were serialized in the Dundee newspaper, where she lived from 1885-7. Adeline then moved to
Bloomsbury,
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, where she earned enough keep to support herself through her writings.
In the late 1880s she developed an interest in
Fabianism
The Fabian Society is a British socialist organisation whose purpose is to advance the principles of social democracy and democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in democracies, rather than by revolutionary overthrow. The Fab ...
and the plight of the poor in London.
Over her literary career, she produced over ninety novels; with some involving a religious theme. Her religious views evolved over time, including a period in the 1880s when she was briefly
agnostic.
Finally, she converted to Catholicism at the end of the century. Emily served as literary adviser to the publishing company
R. Bentley & Sons.
She frequently traveled abroad, making trips to
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
and
Palestine. In 1901 she moved to
Bournemouth, where she died in 1904.
Bibliography
* ''Beyond recall''
(1882)
* ''Jacobi's wife''
(1882)
* ''An open foe. A romance''
(1884)
* ''No saint''
(1886)
* ''Roy's repentance; a novel''
(1888)
* ''Seventy times seven: a novel''
(1888)
* ''A life sentence: a novel''
(1889)
* ''The luck of the house: a novel'' (1889)
* ''Esther Denison''
(1889)
* ''Name and fame: a novel''
(1890)
* ''A true friend: a novel''
(1890)
* ''Brooke's daughter: a novel''
(1891)
* ''Christine; a novel''
(1892)
* ''The story of a penitent soul''
(1892)
* ''Under false pretenses''
(1892)
* ''In Vallombrosa''
(1894)
* ''The surrender of Margaret Bellarmine. A fragment'' (1894)
* ''The mistress of Quest; a novel''
(1895)
* ''Out of due season : a mezzotint''
(1895)
* ''The failure of Sibyl Fletcher: a novel''
(1896)
* ''The idol maker''
(1897)
* ''The Lady Charlotte: a novel''
(1897)
* ''Margaret Wynne''
(1898)
* ''The story of Phil Enerby''
(1898)
* ''A rise in the world; a novel''
(1900)
* ''My lady's diamonds''
(1901)
* ''This body of death''
(1901)
* ''Daunay's tower : a novel''
(1901)
* ''A soul apart''
(1902)
* ''Anthea's way''
(1903)
* ''Beneath the veil''
(1903)
* ''The passion of Paul Marillier''
(1908), posthumous
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Sergeant, Adeline
1851 births
1904 deaths
19th-century English novelists
People from Ashbourne, Derbyshire
English women novelists
20th-century English novelists
20th-century English women writers
19th-century English women writers
19th-century British writers