author

Ellen M. Whishaw

A novelist, journalist, and later writer on Spanish culture, she followed an unusually varied path from Victorian fiction to archaeology and folklore in Andalusia. Her life and work reflect a strong curiosity about places, history, and the stories people carry with them.

1 Audiobook

My Spanish Year

My Spanish Year

by Ellen M. Whishaw

About the author

Born as Ellen Mary Abdy Williams around 1857 in Dawlish, Devon, she first built her career in Britain as a journalist and novelist. She wrote several novels in the 1880s, and records also note that she edited the literary periodical Time for a period after marrying writer and education reformer Bernhard Whishaw in 1885.

Around 1900, she and her husband moved to Seville and turned much of their attention toward Spanish culture and archaeology. After her husband's death in 1914, she remained in Andalusia, where she was associated with museum work and wrote nonfiction books including My Spanish Year and Atlantis in Andalucia: A Study of Folk Memory.

Because the surviving online sources are limited and sometimes use different versions of her name, some details of her later life are not fully clear. Still, the broad outline is striking: she began as a Victorian fiction writer and went on to become a committed observer of Spanish history, landscape, and tradition.