George Paston

author

George Paston

1860–1936

Known to readers by a masculine pen name, this English novelist and critic wrote sharp, witty books about society, marriage, and literary life. Her work offers a lively window into late Victorian and Edwardian England.

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About the author

Born Emily Morse Symonds in 1860, she published under the name George Paston, a choice often noted alongside other women writers who adopted male pen names to move more freely in the literary world. She began publishing in the 1890s and built a reputation as both a novelist and a commentator on books and society.

Her fiction is remembered for its observant, sometimes satirical view of social manners and relationships. She also wrote literary studies and criticism, including work connected with the novelist Jane Austen, showing the same interest in character, reputation, and the pressures of polite society that runs through her fiction.

George Paston died in 1936. Although she is less widely read today than some of her contemporaries, her writing still appeals to readers interested in overlooked women authors, pseudonyms, and the social worlds of turn-of-the-century English fiction.