author
Elizabeth Rachel Chapman
1850–1902
A Victorian poet, novelist, and essayist whose work kept returning to questions of women’s lives, marriage, and social reform. Her writing moves between fiction, criticism, and poetry with a clear interest in the moral debates of her time.
1 Audiobook
A little child's wreath
by Elizabeth Rachel Chapman
About the author
Born in Woodford, Essex, on February 17, 1850, Elizabeth Rachel Chapman was the daughter of merchant Abel Chapman and Elizabeth Fry Chapman. Sources note that through her mother she was a descendant of the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, a family connection that fits the reform-minded concerns seen across her work.
Chapman wrote poetry, novels, and essays, and also published under the forms E. R. C. and E. R. Chapman. Reference sources describe her as a writer deeply engaged with marriage reform and broader questions about the condition of women. Her books include Master of All (1881), The New Godiva, and Other Studies in Social Questions (1885), A Comtist Lover, and Other Studies (1886), and A Companion to In Memoriam (1888), and she also contributed to the Westminster Review.
She died in 1902, leaving behind a body of work that reflects the intellectual and social arguments of late Victorian Britain. Today, she is especially interesting to readers drawn to overlooked women writers whose fiction and essays were closely tied to the reform debates of their age.