Eglanton Thorne

Born Elizabeth Emily Charlton in 1852, she wrote under the pseudonym Eglanton Thorne. She was the daughter of the Congregational minister Rev. John M. Charlton, and accounts of her life note that her first piece appeared in a children’s magazine when she was still very young.

Charlton went on to publish roughly fifty books, many of them for the Religious Tract Society. Her work was aimed largely at younger readers and often combined domestic drama, adventure, and Christian themes in a style that made her a familiar name in late Victorian religious publishing.

Though not widely remembered today outside specialist and public-domain circles, her books continued to circulate long after her death in 1907, and several remain available through digital archives and volunteer reading projects.