Rhoda Broughton (29 November 1840 – 5 June 1920) was a

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novelist and short story writer.Robert Hadji, "Rhoda Broughton" in Jack Sullivan (ed) (1986) ''

The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural ''The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural'' is a reference work on horror fiction in the arts, edited by Jack Sullivan. The book was published in 1986 by Viking Press. Editor Sullivan’s stated purpose in compiling the volume, ...

'' Viking Press, 1986, , p. 285. Her early novels earned a reputation for

sensationalism In journalism and mass media, sensationalism is a type of editorial tactic. Events and topics in news stories are selected and worded to excite the greatest number of readers and viewers. This style of news reporting encourages biased or emoti ...

, so that her later, stronger work tended to be neglected by critics, although she was called a queen of the circulating libraries. Her novel ''Dear Faustina'' (1897) has been noted for its

homoeroticism Homoeroticism is sexual attraction between members of the same sex, including both male–male and female–female attraction. The concept differs from the concept of homosexuality: it refers specifically to the desire itself, which can be tempor ...

. Her novel ''Lavinia'' (1902) depicts a seemingly "unmanly" young man, who wishes he had been born as a woman. Broughton descended from the

Broughton baronets The Broughton, later Broughton-Delves, later Broughton Baronetcy, of Broughton in the County of Stafford, is a title in the Baronetage of England. It was created on 10 March 1661 for Sir Brian Broughton, of Broughton Hall, near Eccleshall, Staff ...

, as a granddaughter of the 8th baronet. She was a niece of

Sheridan le Fanu Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (; 28 August 1814 – 7 February 1873), popularly known as J. S. Le Fanu, was an Irish writer of Gothic literature, mystery novels, and horror fiction. Considered by critics to be one of the greatest ghost ...

, who helped her to start her literary career. She was a long-time friend of fellow writer

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

and was noted for her adversarial relationship with both

Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, mathematician, photographer and reluctant Anglicanism, Anglican deacon. His most notable works are ''Alice ...

and

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...

Life

Rhoda Broughton was born in

Denbigh Denbigh ( ; ) is a market town and a community (Wales), community in Denbighshire, Wales. It was the original county town of the Denbighshire (historic), historic county of Denbighshire created in 1536. Denbigh's Welsh name () translates to ...

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on 29 November 1840, the daughter of the Rev. Delves Broughton, youngest son of the Rev. Sir Henry Delves-Broughton, 8th baronet, and Jane Bennett, daughter of a leading Irish barrister, George Bennett. Her aunt, Susanna Bennett, married the well-known fiction writer

. Rhoda Broughton developed a taste for literature as a young girl, especially poetry. She was influenced by

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

, as frequent quotations and allusions throughout her works show. Presumably, after reading ''The Story of Elizabeth'' by

Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie Anne Isabella, Lady Ritchie ( Thackeray; 9 June 1837 – 26 February 1919), eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, was an English writer, whose several novels were appreciated in their time and made her a central figure on the late Vict ...

, she had the idea of trying her own talent. She produced her first work within six weeks. Parts of this novel she took with her on a visit to her uncle Sheridan le Fanu, himself a successful author, who was highly pleased with it and assisted her in having it published – her first two novels appeared in 1867 in his ''

Dublin University Magazine The ''Dublin University Magazine'' was an independent literary cultural and political magazine published in Dublin from 1833 to 1882. It started out as a magazine of political commentary but increasingly became devoted to literature. The magazine ...

''. Le Fanu also introduced her to the publisher

Richard Bentley Richard Bentley FRS (; 27 January 1662 – 14 July 1742) was an English classical scholar, critic, and theologian. Considered the "founder of historical philology", Bentley is widely credited with establishing the English school of Hellenis ...

, who refused her first novel on the grounds of it being improper material, but accepted the second. Broughton in turn introduced

Mary Cholmondeley Mary Cholmondeley ( ; 8 June 1859 – 15 July 1925) was an English novelist. Her bestseller '' Red Pottage'' satirised religious hypocrisy and the narrowness of country life. It was adapted as a silent film in 1918. Family Mary Cholmondeley w ...

to her publishers in about 1887. Broughton's writing style was to influence other writers like Mary Cecil Hay, who is thought to have a similar style of dialogue. Bentley also published a novel of hers which he had initially rejected. She made an effort to employ the popular three-decker form and adapt it to the assumed taste of Bentley's readers. Their professional relationship lasted until the Bentley publishing house was taken over by Macmillan in the late 1890s. By then Broughton had published 14 novels over a period of 30 years. Ten of these were in the three-volume form, which she found hard to comply with. After the commercial failure of ''Alas!'', for which she received her highest-ever payment at the height of her career, she decided to write one-volume novels instead. This was the form for her finest works. However, she never shed her early reputation for creating fast heroines with easy morals, as in her early novels, and was still dismissed as merely slight and sensational. After the take-over, Broughton remained with Macmillan and published another six novels there, but by then her popularity was declining. In a review published in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' of 12 May 1906, a certain K. Clark complained that her latest novel was hard to procure and wondered why such a fine writer was so little appreciated. After 1910 she moved to Stanley, Paul & Co, which published three novels of hers. Her last, ''A Fool in Her Folly'' (1920), was printed posthumously with an introduction by a long-time friend and fellow writer,

Marie Belloc Lowndes Marie Adelaide Elizabeth Rayner Lowndes (née Belloc; 5 August 1868 – 14 November 1947), who wrote as Marie Belloc Lowndes, was a prolific English novelist, and sister of author Hilaire Belloc. Active from 1898 until her death, she had a re ...

. This work can be seen as partially autobiographical and may have been written at an earlier time, but suppressed for personal reasons. It deals with the experiences of a young writer and reflects her own, as does her previous novel ''A Beginner''. The manuscript is in her own handwriting, which is unusual, as some previous work had been dictated to an assistant. Broughton's final years were spent at

Headington Hill Headington Hill is a hill in the east of Oxford, England, in the suburb of Headington. The Headington Road goes up the hill leading out of the city. There are good views of the spires of Oxford from the hill, especially from the top of South Par ...

, near

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

where she died on 5 June 1920, aged 79. A

blue plaque A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom, and certain other countries and territories, to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving a ...

was unveiled on her home there on 22 October 2020.

Works

Somerset Maugham William Somerset Maugham ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German un ...

, in his short story "The Round Dozen" (1924, also known as "The Ardent Bigamist") observes: "I remember Miss Broughton telling me once that when she was young people said her books were fast and when she was old they said they were slow, and it was very hard since she had written exactly the same sort of book for forty years." Rhoda Broughton never married, and some critics assume that a disappointed attachment was the impulse that made her try her pen instead of some other literary work like that of Mrs Thackeray Ritchie. Much of her life she spent with her sister, Eleanor Newcome, until the latter's death in Richmond in 1895. In this she followed the tradition of great lady novelists like

Maria Edgeworth Maria Edgeworth (1 January 1768 – 22 May 1849) was a prolific Anglo-Irish novelist of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and a significant figure in the evolution of the novel i ...

Jane Austen Jane Austen ( ; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for #List of works, her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century ...

Susan Ferrier Susan Edmonstone Ferrier (7 September 1782 – 5 November 1854) was a List of Scottish novelists, Scottish novelist. Her novels, giving vivid accounts of Scottish life and presenting sharp views on women's education, remained popular throughout ...

. But there are other merits that cause her to be placed in such high company. In his article on her Richard C. Tobias calls her "the leading woman novelist in England between the death of

George Eliot Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrot ...

and the beginning of

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Vir ...

's career". He compares her work with other novelists of the time and concludes that hers reaches a much higher quality. ''The Game and the Candle'' (1899) is like

's ''

Persuasion Persuasion or persuasion arts is an umbrella term for influence. Persuasion can influence a person's beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behaviours. Persuasion is studied in many disciplines. Rhetoric studies modes of persuasi ...

'' (1818) rewritten: this time the heroine has married for rational reasons and is freed in the beginning for her true love, which reason forbade her to marry years before. Her dying husband's last will obliges her to decide between love and fortune. However, a renewed encounter with her former lover forces her to see it was actually a good thing she had not married him. His love turns out to be too shallow for her happiness. The novel is one written by a mature and wise woman, who has seen the world. In ''A Beginner'' (1894) Broughton devises a young writer who has her work secretly published and then later torn apart by unknowing people right in front of her face. The novel deals with the moral issues of writing and whether it is appropriate for a young woman to write romantic or even erotic fiction. ''Scylla or Charybdis?'' (1895) has a mother hiding her infamous past from her son and obsessing about his love even to the extent of being jealous of other women, a plot to some extent anticipating Lawrence's ''

Sons and Lovers ''Sons and Lovers'' is a 1913 novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. It traces emotional conflicts through the protagonist, Paul Morel, and his suffocating relationships with a demanding mother and two very different lovers, which exert ...

'' (1913). The novel questions social conventions in revealing how destructive they can be to quiet people who might have once stepped aside from the proper path. In a different way the same criticism is being made in ''Foes in Law'' (1900), where the main question is which lifestyle is the one productive of the highest degree of happiness: the conventional one or one that accords with private needs. Her next novel, ''Dear Faustina'' (1897), deals with a heroine drawn to a girl of the

New Woman The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century and had a profound influence well into the 20th century. In 1894, writer Sarah Grand (1854–1943) used the term "new woman" in an influential article to refer to indepe ...

type. This New Woman Faustina cares nothing for social conventions and dedicates her time to fighting social injustice. Or so it seems at first sight, but the reader gets the feeling that Faustina is more interested in getting to know and impress other young women, which can also be interpreted as criticism of the New Woman as a type. The homoerotic touch reappears in ''Lavinia'' (1902), but this time it is a young man who is frequently made to appear unmanly and even utter the wish to have been born a woman. That novel also concerns itself with Britain's craze for war heroes. Very subtly it questions dominant notions of masculinity. Always an important feature in all her novels is criticism of woman's role and position in society. Very often Broughton's women are strong characters and with them, she manages to subvert traditional images of femininity. This culminates in ''A Waif's Progress'' (1905), in which Broughton creates a married couple who turn everything traditional upside down, with the wife fulfilling the stereotype of an older, rich husband. Broughton's collection ''Tales for Christmas Eve'' (1873, also known as ''Twilight Stories'') was a collection of five

ghost stories A ghost story is any piece of fiction, or drama, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them."Ghost Stories" in Margaret Drabble (ed.), ''Oxford Companion to English Literature''. ...

.B. F. Fischer IV, "Twilight Stories". In Frank N. Magill, ed. ''Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature'', Vol 4. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Press, Inc., 1983, pp. 1989–1991. Robert S. Hadji describes her "short ghost fiction as not as terrifying as her uncle's, but it is skilfully wrought". Hadji also describes Broughton's story "Nothing But the Truth" (1868, vt. "The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth") as "one of her cleverest stories". During her lifetime, Broughton was one of the queens of the circulating libraries. Her fame and success was such that some found it worthwhile to satirise her in works like "Groweth Down Like A Toadstool" or "Gone Wrong" by "Miss Rody Dendron". It is a pity we do not know how she took such things. Perhaps she stood up to them as she did to people like

, who bore her no love. The latter is said to have declined an invitation because Broughton would be present. The former found a match in her when it came to ironical comments in Oxford society, where she was not liked much, either, due to her ridicule of that set in her novel ''Belinda'' (1883). Nevertheless, she also had many friends in literary circles, the most prominent of them being

, with whom she stayed friends until his death in 1916. According to Helen C. Black, James visited Broughton every evening, when they were both in London.

Cultural allusion

"Black Sheep retreated to the nursery and read ''Cometh up as a Flower'' with deep and uncomprehending interest. He had been forbidden to open it on account of its 'sinfulness'..." From

Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English journalist, novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was born in British Raj, British India, which inspired much ...

's short story, ''Baa Baa Black Sheep'', published 1888.

Partial bibliography

Short stories

*"The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth". By the author of "Cometh Up as a Flower". 1868 February, ''Temple Bar'', Vol. 22, pp. 340–348 *"The Man with the Nose". By Rhoda Broughton, author of "Cometh Up as a Flower." 1872 October, ''Temple Bar'', Vol. 36, pp. 328–342 *"Behold, it was a Dream!" Unsigned. 1872 November, ''Temple Bar'', Vol. 36, pp. 503–516 *"Poor Pretty Bobby". By Rhoda Broughton. 1872 December, ''Temple Bar'', Vol. 37, pp. 61–78 *"Under the Cloak". By Rhoda Broughton. 1873 January, ''Temple Bar'', Vol. 37, pp. 205–212 *''Tales of Christmas Eve''. 1873 Bentley; ''Twilight Stories''. 1879 Bentley **The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth (1868) **The Man with the Nose (1872) **Behold, it was a Dream! (1872) **Poor Pretty Bobby (1872) **Under the Cloak (1873) *"What it Meant". By Rhoda Broughton. 1881 September, ''Temple Bar'', Vol. 63, pp. 82–94 *''Betty's Visions''. By Rhoda Broughton, author of "Nancy," "Red as a Rose is She," &c. 1883 December 15, 22, 29, ''The Bristol Mercury and Daily Post'', p. 6 *''Mrs. Smith of Longmains''. By Rhoda Broughton, author of "Cometh Up as a Flower," "Good-Bye Sweetheart," "Not Wisely, But Too Well," "Nancy," "Red as a Rose is She," &c., &c. 31 October, 7 November 1885, ''Sheffield and Rotherham Independent'', Supplement pp. 2–3, p. 3 *''Betty's Visions and Mrs. Smith of Longmains''. 1886, Routledge Paperback; 1889, Blackett *"Betty's Visions" (1883) *"Mrs. Smith of Longmains" (1885) *"Was She Mad?" By Rhoda Broughton. 1888 December 26, ''The Belfast News-Letter'', p. 3 *"A Home of Rest". By Rhoda Broughton rticle 1891 September, ''Temple Bar'', Vol. 93, pp. 68–72 *Across the Threshold. By Rhoda Broughton, author of "Red as a Rose is She," "Nancy," &c. 1892 June 11, ''

The Penny Illustrated Paper The ''Penny Illustrated Paper and Illustrated Times'' was a cheap ( 1d.) illustrated London weekly newspaper that ran from 1861 to 1913. Premises Illustrated weekly newspapers had been pioneered by the ''Illustrated London News'' (published fro ...

'' Vol. 62, pp. 372–373 *His Serene Highness. Signed Rhoda Broughton. 1893 May, in ''The Pall Mall Magazine'' Vol.1, pp. 8–19 *"Rent Day". By Rhoda Broughton, author of "Good-Bye Sweetheart", etc. 1893 June, ''Temple Bar'', Vol. 98, pp. 228–248 *"A Christmas Outing" 1895, ''The Lady's Pictorial Christmas Number'' *"A Stone's Throw" 1897 May, ''

The Lady's Realm ''The Lady's Realm'' was a British women's magazine published from 1896 until 1914, possibly until 1915. It primarily targeted upper-class readers as well as an aspirational middle-class audience, featuring photographs, poems, fiction, and columns ...

'' Vol. 2, pp. 11–17 *"In Five Acts". By Rhoda Broughton. 1897 July 10, ''The Scranton Republican'', p. 10. 1901 February, ''The Ludgate'' Series 2, Vol. 11, pp. 340–351

References

External links

Jack Mooney collection of Rhoda Broughton at the University of South Carolina Department of Rare Books and Special Collections
– profile and e-texts of five of her novels * * * *
Works at the Victorian Women Writers ProjectVictorian Secrets: Rhoda Broughton
* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Broughton, Rhoda 1840 births 1920 deaths 19th-century English short story writers 19th-century Welsh novelists 20th-century Welsh novelists 19th-century Welsh women writers 20th-century Welsh women writers Welsh women novelists Victorian novelists Victorian women writers Welsh horror writers British ghost story writers British women horror writers People from Denbigh Welsh short story writers English women short story writers Victorian short story writers Sensation novelists