Mabel E. Wotton

Mabel Elizabeth Emily Wotton (1863-1927) was an English writer.[1]

Life

Mabel E. Wotton was born in London to Frances Emily and John Stirling Wilmot Wotton, a civil servant.[1][2] (Note that her Times death notice gives her father's name as Henry Stirling Wotton.[3]) Her older brother Thomas wrote plays, and her younger sister Edith was a publisher's reader.[1]

In 1895, through the actress Irene Vanbrugh, Wotton met Israel Zangwill. Zangwill introduced Wotton's work to the publisher John Lane, who accepted Day-Books for his controversial Keynotes series.[4] Wotton and Zangwill kept up a friendship and correspondence until at least 1920.[5] Zangwill based the character Margaret Engelborne in The Mantle of Elijah on Wotton.[4] Her correspondence with Zangwill shows her connections to London's literary world. She knew George Egerton and Dion Boucicault, and dedicated her story collection Day-Books to Alice Meynell in "gratitute for tenderness".[6] She never married.[2]

Wotton is best known for her New Woman fiction.[2][7] As well as her adult novels and short stories, Wotton wrote several books for children. She also contributed non-fiction to the Cornhill Magazine, and wrote an appreciation of the actor H. B. Irving.

She died in London on 3 March 1927.[3]

Works

  • Word Portraits of Famous Writers. London: R. Bentley & Son, 1887.
  • A Pretty Radical and Other Stories. London: D. Stott, 1890.
  • A Girl Diplomatist. London: Chapman and Hall, 1892.
  • A Nursery Idyll. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1892.
  • A Mannerless Monkey. London: A. D. Innes & Co., 1893. Illustrated by Edith Ellison.
  • Day-Books. London: John Lane, 1896.
  • On Music's Wings. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1898.
  • The Little Browns. London : Blackie & Son, Ltd., 1900. Illustrated by H. M. Brock.
  • H. B. Irving: An Appreciation. London: Cassell, 1911.

References

  1. ^ a b c Troy J. Bassett, Author Information: Mabel E. Wotton, At the Circulating Library, Accessed 7 April 2020.
  2. ^ a b c Carolyn Christensen Nelson (2000). A New Woman Reader: Fiction, Articles and Drama of the 1890s. Broadview Press. p. 101. ISBN 978-1-55111-295-4.
  3. ^ a b 'Deaths', The Times, 5 March 1927, p. 1.
  4. ^ a b Meri-Jane Rochelson (2010). A Jew in the Public Arena: The Career of Israel Zangwill. Wayne State University Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-8143-4083-7.
  5. ^ Rochelson, Meri-Jane (2005). "The Friendship of Israel Zangwill and Mabel E. Wotton". English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920. 48 (3): 305–23.
  6. ^ Sigrid Anderson Cordell (2015). Fictions of Dissent: Reclaiming Authority in Transatlantic Women's Writing of the Late Nineteenth Century. Routledge. p. 24. ISBN 978-1-317-32407-2.
  7. ^ Randall, Bryony (2012). "'Everything depend[s] on the fashion of narration': Women Writing Women Writers in Short Stories of the Fin de Siècle". In Rena Kim; Claire Westall (eds.). Cross-Gendered Literary Voices: Appropriating, Resisting, Embracing. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 36–. ISBN 978-1-137-02075-8.