Ella Lindow aka Gabrielle Wodnil and Ella Wodnil (12 February 1880 – 27 April 1933) was a British novelist and songwriter.
Life
Lindow was born in 1880 in
Islington
Islington ( ) is an inner-city area of north London, England, within the wider London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's #Islington High Street, High Street to Highbury Fields ...
. She was the only child of Angelina (born Levy in London) and her Russian born husband Joseph Lindow. Her father dealt in diamonds and he had been married before, giving her seven elder half-siblings who had been born in America and Germany.
[
She had two successful careers and the first was in music. She used the name "Gabrielle Wodnil" (Lindow spelt backwards) for her songs and her writing. After her skills as a pianist gained her the ]Royal Academy of Music
The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, England, is one of the oldest music schools in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the firs ...
's bronze medal, she tried writing, performing and writing songs. By 1906 she was performing in variety and successfully selling her songs. The pantomime and Edwardian musical comedy
Edwardian musical comedy is a genre of British musical theatre that thrived from 1892 into the 1920s, extending beyond the reign of King Edward VII in both directions. It began to dominate the English musical stage, and even the American musical ...
star Evie Greene
Edith Elizabeth "Evie" Greene (14 January 1875 – 11 September 1917) was a much-photographed English actress and singer who played in Edwardian musical comedies in London and on Broadway theatre, Broadway. She starred as Dolores in the internat ...
took up her song "Yet, if I Said, Forgive" and other notable songs were "Lapland", "Just a Snapshot" and "Won't You Come Rinking?". She believed that great songs made great pantomimes and by 1910 she was writing about pantomimes and the conventional theatre.[ The novel involved Mike Bhear who believes that money can buy him nearly anything he wants and his young maid who expects more respect than she gets.][ The maid is actually Lady Margaret Taunton but the boss does not know that and she says "Oh Sir you mustn't talk like that with you a real gentleman and me just a poor girl". Mike's offer to Maggie includes a career on the stage in the musical theatre.][ includes a reference to "Evie Green" singing "Yet, if I Said, Forgive" but the link between Wodnil as a songwriter and Wodnil as a novelist does not appear to have been spotted.][
Wodnil's next novel in 1913 also alluded to the seaside, holidays and romance. It was titled ''Brineta ar Brighton: A Boarding house romance'' and it involved a meeting of people of different social classes. Brineta O'Byrne is employed as a ]lady's companion
A lady's companion was a woman of genteel birth who lived with a woman of rank or wealth as Affinity (medieval), retainer. The term was in use in the United Kingdom from at least the 18th century to the mid-20th century but it is now archaism, arc ...
.
Death and legacy
Lindow's ''Maggie of Margate'' was republished in 1926 in paperback. She died in 1933 in Hampstead
Hampstead () is an area in London, England, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, located mainly in the London Borough of Camden, with a small part in the London Borough of Barnet. It borders Highgate and Golders Green to the north, Belsiz ...
.[ In 2023 the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography included her, Florence L. Barclay, Mrs. Disney Leith and Bessie Marchant in new biographies of eleven Victorian writers who have caught the attention of academics.]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lindow, Ella
1880 births
1933 deaths
People from Islington (district)
British women novelists
Romantic fiction novelists