Evelyn Everett-Green

Evelyn Everett-Green
Born Evelyn Ward Everett-Green
(1856-11-17)17 November 1856
London, England
Died 23 April 1932(1932-04-23) (aged 75)
Funchal, Madeira, Portugal
Pen name H. F. E., Cecil Adair, E. Ward, Evelyn Dare
Occupation Writer (novelist)
Nationality English
Period 19th century
Genre Children's Literature, Historical fiction, Adult romance fiction

Evelyn Ward Everett-Green (17 November 1856, London – 23 April 1932, Funchal) was an English novelist who started her writing career with improving and pious stories for children, later wrote historical fiction for older girls, and then turned to adult romantic fiction. She wrote about 350 books: more than 200 of them under her own name, and others using the pen-names H. F. E., Cecil Adair, E. Ward, or Evelyn Dare.

Early life and work

Her mother was the historian Mary Anne Everett Green and her father George Pycock Green an artist. The family were Methodists.

Evelyn attended Gower Street Preparatory School and then had a year at Bedford College, London (1872–1873),[1] during which she wrote her first novel. She continued to write while studying at the London Academy of Music. She also nursed in a London hospital for two years.[1] Her brother's death in 1876 ended plans to go to India with him, and she occupied herself with good works, including Sunday School teaching and nursing.

Later life and work

In 1880 her first published work, Tom Tempest's Victory, appeared. Though it was soon followed by more, she found writing at home difficult, and town winters did not suit her health. In 1883 she went to live outside London with Catherine Mainwaring Sladen, and in the 1890s and early 1900s they had homes in Albury, Surrey. In 1911 they moved abroad and eventually settled in Madeira. She became an active member of the Anglican community there and was buried in the British Cemetery. There is a memorial plaque on the interior south wall of Holy Trinity Church (the English Church), Funchal.[2][3]

During her time in Albury she wrote numerous historical novels, and fewer moral tales for the Religious Tract Society. Her novel about Joan of Arc, Called of Her Country (1903), later re-published as A Heroine of France, presents Joan as a feminine "Angelic Maid" in white armour whose inspiring adventures were undertaken in a dutiful spirit.

Much of Everett-Green's fiction and non-fiction was aimed at girls, but she also wrote boys' adventure stories, such as A Gordon Highlander (1901).

After moving abroad she wrote romantic novels for adults, often using the pseudonym Cecil Adair. According to a modern critic, "Family sagas or romances with a historical adventure setting were her speciality."[1]

Selected works

  • Monica, Volume 1-3 (1889)
  • The Lord of Dynevor: A Tale of the Times of Edward the First (1892)
  • In the Days of Chivalry: A Tale of the Times of the Black Prince (1893)
  • In Taunton town : a story of the rebellion of James Duke of Monmouth in 1685 (1896)
  • Squib and His Friends (1897)
  • Tom Tufton's Travels (1898)
  • French and English: A Story of the Struggle in America (1899)
  • In the Wars of the Roses: A Story for the Young (1901)
  • True Stories of Girl Heroines (1901)
  • The Secret Chamber at Chad (1894)
  • The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn: A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot (1894)
  • Fallen Fortunes (1906)
  • A Heroine of France: The Story of Joan of Arc (1906)
  • For the Faith: A Story of the Young Pioneers of Reformation in Oxford

References

  1. 1 2 3 Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy: The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present Day (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 349.
  2. ↑ British Cemetery and Holy Trinity Church archives, Funchal, Madeira
  3. ↑ Hilary Clare: "Green, Evelyn Ward Everett", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: OUP, 2004) Retrieved 31 May 2018.

Sources

  • Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction 1900–1914: New Voices in the Age of Uncertainty, ed. Kemp, Mitchell, Trotter (OUP, 1997)
  • Hilary Clare, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  • Penny Brown, "Reinventing the Maid: images of Joan of Arc in French and English children's literature", The Presence of the Past in Children's Literature ed. Ann Lawson Lucas (Praeger, 2003)

Further reading

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