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At the Circulating Library

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

Author: Ellen Gertrude Wolrige

Author: Ellen Gertrude Wolrige (1855–1939)

Alternate Name(s): May (married name)

Biography: Ellen Gertrude Wolrige was born in 1854 in London, the fourth daughter of James Wolrige of Bath and Southsea. She wrote just one novel Hilda Egerton (1886) published with the disreputable publisher Bevington. The Athenaeum described it as a "very religious novel, edifying, purposeful, and ungrammatical" and the Saturday Review called it "a tiresome story about a tiresome girl." In 1888, she married Rev. Walter Dunstan May, LL.B., the curate of St. Michael and All Angels, London. She died in 1939 at Folkestone.

References: Athenaeum (6 February 1886); British Census (1871, 1881); Hampshire Telegraph (3 November 1888); Saturday Review (27 February 1886); Times (28 November 1939)

Fiction Titles:

  1. Hilda Egerton.  2 vol.  London: Bevington, 1886.