author
Emilie Searchfield
A Victorian novelist from rural Wiltshire, she built a long writing career after an early success in a local newspaper competition. Her stories range from domestic fiction to moral tales and romances, including The Heiress of Wyvern Court.
1 Audiobook
The Heiress of Wyvern Court
by Emilie Searchfield
About the author
Emilie Searchfield was a British novelist who lived from 1844 to 1911. According to the Victorian Research database, she was born in Knook, Wiltshire, the daughter of Thomas Searchfield and Harriet Searchfield, a schoolmistress, and she spent her life in Wiltshire, helping at her mother's school before turning seriously to writing.
The same source says she began very young, later recalling that she wrote her first poem at six and her first story soon after. A prize-winning story for a local newspaper helped bring her to the attention of London publishers, and she went on to become a prolific novelist and magazine contributor.
Her known works include Cloister Laach, My Neighbours' Windows, Those Watchful Eyes, Afterward, The Secret Cave, and The Heiress of Wyvern Court. Victorian Research also notes that illness in the early 1900s made writing harder for her, and that she died in Salisbury in 1911.