Linton, Mrs. Eliza Lynn

(1822-1898)

   Novelist and miscellaneous writer, dau. of a clergyman, settled in London in 1845, and next year produced her first novel, Azeth, the Egyptian; Amymone (1848), and Realities (1851), followed. None of these had any great success, and she then joined the staff of the Morning Chronicle, and All the Year Round. In 1858 she m. W.J. Linton, an eminent wood-engraver, who was also a poet of some note, a writer upon his craft, and a Republican. In 1867 they separated in a friendly way, the husband going to America, and the wife devoting herself to novel-writing, in which she attained wide popularity. Her most successful works were The True History of Joshua Davidson (1872), Patricia Kemball (1874), and Christopher Kirkland. She was a severe critic of the "new woman."