Florence Marryat (9 July 1833 – 27 October 1899) was an English author and actress. The daughter of author Capt.Frederick Marryat, she was particularly known for hersensational novels and her involvement with several celebrated spiritual mediums of the late 19th century. Her works includeLove’s Conflict (1865),Her Father's Name (1876),There is No Death (1891) andThe Spirit World (1894),The Dead Man's Message (1894) andThe Blood of the Vampire (1897). She was a prolific author, writing around 70 books, as well as newspaper and magazine articles, short stories and works for the stage.
From 1876 to 1890, she had a performing career, at first writing and performing a comic touring piano sketch entertainment, together withGeorge Grossmith and later performing in dramas, comedies, comic opera with aD'Oyly Carte Opera Company, her own one-woman show, and appearing as a lecturer, dramatic reader and public entertainer. During the 1890s, she ran a school of Journalism and Literary Art.
Marryat was born inBrighton, Sussex, in 1833, daughter of author and naval CaptainFrederick Marryat and his wife, Catherine (née Shairp). Her parents separated when Marryat was young; her childhood was divided between her parents' residences, where she was privately educated.[1]
Shortly before her 21st birthday, in 1854, she wed Thomas Ross Church, an officer in the Madras staff corps of the British Army in India; they spent the first seven years of their married life travelling extensively in India before she returned to England in 1860 with her children but without her husband, who apparently visited only occasionally. She had eight children with Church, three of them while in India.[2]
Marryat wrote her first novel,Love’s Conflict (1865), while her young children were suffering from scarlet fever, to distract herself from "sad thoughts". The novel met with modest success and was followed byToo Good for Him andWoman Against Woman in the same year. Other early works includedThe Confessions of Gerald Escourt (1867),Nelly Brooke (1868),Veronique (1868) andThe Girls of Feversham (1869), mining the British public's taste for sensational fiction: "lurid stories of seduction, murder, insanity, extramarital sex, incest, and the exploits of the demi-monde".[3] Marryat continued to write novels for 35 years. In 1872, she wrote a biography of her father,Life and Letters of Captain Marryat. From 1872 to 1876, in addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she edited the monthly magazineLondon Society.[1][4]
By the mid-1870s Marryat was an internationally successful author and was living together with her future husband, Colonel Francis Lean of the Royal Marine Light Infantry. Church eventually sued for divorce in 1878, citing his wife's adultery as the grounds.[1] From 1876 to 1877, she collaborated withGeorge Grossmith, writing and performing a comic touring entertainment calledEntre Nous ("Between you and me"). This piece consisted of a series of piano sketches, alternating with scenes and costumed recitations, including a two-person "satirical musical sketch", really a shortcomic opera, by Grossmith calledCups and Saucers.[5] Marryat and her husband divorced in 1879; later that year, she wed Colonel Lean, but they divorced only a year later, in 1880.[4]
At the age of 48, in 1881, Marryat returned to the stage, playing the role of Hephzibah Horton in a drama she wrote based on her novelHer World Against a Lie. The next year, she joined aD'Oyly Carte Opera Company touring company inGilbert and Sullivan'sPatience, playing the role of Lady Jane. In 1884 she played Queen Altemire in a revival ofW. S. Gilbert's fairy comedyThe Palace of Truth in London withHerbert Beerbohm Tree.[4] In 1886, Marryat wrote a lighthearted book about her travels in the United States calledTom Tiddler's Ground. She later appeared in her own one-woman show,Love Letters, and appeared as a lecturer, dramatic reader and public entertainer. She continued performing until 1890, when she played Cassandra Doolittle in an operetta calledThe Dear Departed.[4]
Marryat became active in theSociety of Authors, founded in 1884, and also began to breed bulldogs and terriers.[3] Over the last 14 years of her life, she had a relationship with a younger actor, Herbert McPherson, who inherited half of her estate.[1] During the 1890s, she ran a school of Journalism and Literary Art.[1] She continued writing for the rest of her life, and some of her best known books were her late-career writings onspiritualism, and includedThere Is No Death (1891),The Spirit World (1894) andA Soul on Fire. She influencedwiccanGerald Gardner in his youth.[6]
Marryat died in 1899 fromdiabetes andpneumonia[1] and is buried inKensal Green Cemetery in London.[2]
Marryat published 68 novels before her death, as well as various non-fiction works such asThe Life and Letters of Captain Marryat (1872) andGup (1868), an account of garrison life in India. She also wrote newspaper and magazine articles, short stories and works for the stage. Her works treated such then-controversial themes as marital cruelty, adultery, alcoholism and spiritualism.[7]There is No Death andThe Spirit World give accounts ofséances she attended.[2]
The public found Marryat's work accessible, and reviewers admitted the effectiveness of her "graphic, nervous, vital" style, but critics called her "cynical and 'third-rate', too dependent for her plots on 'the stock in trade of fourth-rate solicitors'".[3] Despite critical hostility, her novels remained popular.[3]
Novels[edit]
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Children’s stories[edit]
Collaborations[edit]
Plays[edit]
Memoirs[edit]
Spiritualism[edit]
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