Background

Ethnicity: Her father, James Cowan, was of Northern Ireland, while her mother, Ellen (Kilshaw) Cowan, was of Liverpool, England.

Charlotte Riddell was born Charlotte Cowan in a small town in County Antrim, Ireland, on September 30, 1832. She was the daughter of James Cowan, the county's high sheriff, and Ellen (Kilshaw) Cowan. Riddell grew up in quite comfortable circumstances.

Career

Within a few years after her father's death, Charlotte and her mother decided to move to London, for Riddell hoped to earn her living as a writer, one of the few semi-respectable professions open to women at the time. They arrived in London in the mid-1850s and found life there hard and money short.

Riddell's first two novels were long thought to have been lost, but finally were identified as Zuriel's Grandchild (1856), under the pseudonym R. V. Sparling, and The Ruling Passion (1857), under the pseudonym Rainey Hawthorne. It seems likely she earned little money from them. Her third novel, The Moors and the Fens (1858), under the pseudonym F. G. Trafford, finally brought some success, and she continued to publish under this pseudonym until 1866.

Despite its personal drawbacks, Riddell's marriage was important to her writing, for it was through Joseph that she gained many details of life in "the City," as the financial heart of London is known. She put this information to use in many of her most popular novels, including City and Suburb (1861), Mitre Court (1885), and The Head of the Firm (1892). It also formed the background for her breakthrough and most successful novel, published in 1864. George Geith of Fen Court, the story of a cleric who leaves his wife, his congregation, and the religious life to become an accountant in the City, went through several editions and was adapted into a play that was popular on the stage through the 1880s.

Riddell's work found a ready audience for nearly a quarter of a century after the publication of George Geith. She began publishing as Mrs. J. H. Riddell in 1866 and, over the course of her career, wrote some 46 novels (some anonymous ones may have yet to be discovered). Considered among the best of these which do not focus on the financial world are Home, Sweet Home (1873), Miss Gascoyne (1887), and The Nun's Curse (1888). A Struggle for Fame (1883) was said to have been autobiographical, focusing on her own struggle to become a successful writer; Berna Boyle (1882) was one of her rare novels set in her native Ireland; and Above Suspicion (1876) was a "sensation" novel (at one time, Riddell was almost as popular as Mary Elizabeth Braddon, author of Lady Audley's Secret, the sensation novel par excellence). She also edited Home Magazine and Anna Maria Hall's St. James's Magazine for several years in the 1860s and contributed regularly to periodicals and Christmas annuals.

Riddell published a number of short stories, and it is for her ghost stories that she is now primarily remembered and read. She also wrote four novels with supernatural themes, Fairy Water (1873), The Uninhabited House (1874), The Haunted River (1877), and The Disappearance of Mr. Jeremiah Redworth (1878), but these have rarely been republished and currently are all but unavailable. She published ghost stories in the popular Christmas annuals and released three collections: Weird Stories (1884), Idle Tales (1888), and The Banshee's Warning (1894).

Riddell's husband died in 1880, leaving substantial debts which she paid off with her writing. This became increasingly difficult as her work fell out of fashion beginning in the 1890s, and she grew steadily poorer and began to suffer from ill health. Her poverty was somewhat alleviated after 1901, when she became the first writer to receive a pension from the Society of Authors, but her last years were not spent in comfort. She died of cancer in London in 1906.

Achievements

• Riddell is considered one of the best Victorian ghost story writers; some have placed her just below J. S. Le Fanu, the acknowledged master of this crowded genre. A number of her stories are now classics, held as standards of the genre and frequently anthologized. Riddell was the first author to write successfully on business life in England, romanticizing a subject that was generally avoided by her contemporaries.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Uninhabited House

    (When her father commits suicide, Helena Elmsdale and her ...)

    1875
  • The Disappearance of Mr. Jeremiah Redworth

    (When Jeremiah Redworth fails to return from home, his fam...)

    1878
  • Fairy Water

    (When H. Stafford Trevor, barrister-at-law, agrees to act ...)

    1873
  • Zuriel's Grandchild 1856
  • The Ruling Passion 1857
  • The Moors and the Fens 1857
  • The Rich Husband 1858
  • George Geith of Fen Court 1864
  • Maxwell Drewitt 1865
  • Phemie Keller 1866
  • The Race For Wealth 1866
  • Far Above Rubies 1867
  • Austin Friars 1870
  • A Life's Assize 1871
  • The Earl's Promise 1873
  • Home, Sweet Home 1873
  • Mortomley's Estate 1874
  • Above Suspicion 1876
  • Her Mother's Darling 1877
  • The Mystery in Palace Gardens 1880

Views

Conventional in format, as well as characteristically Victorian in their decorous prose style and moralistic tone, Riddell's works are distinguished by her skillful use of detail to create a realistic depiction of the milieu she portrayed.

Connections

In 1857, Riddell married a civil engineer, Joseph Hadley Riddell, whose poor head for business meant that she ended up supporting them both with her writing and keeping to a punishing schedule to pay off the debts he incurred. Joseph passed away in 1880.

Father:

James Cowan

James Cowan was high sheriff for County Antrim.

Mother:

Ellen (Kilshaw) Cowan

late spouse:

Joseph Hadley Riddell