Jessie Fothergill

Born in Manchester in June 1851, Jessie Fothergill was an English novelist who spent part of her youth in Europe, including time in Germany. That experience later fed into her fiction, especially The First Violin, the novel most closely associated with her name.

She began publishing in the 1870s and built a reputation for emotionally intense, often unconventional stories. The First Violin became a notable success after early doubts from publishers, and she went on to write other novels including Probation, Kith and Kin, and Oriole's Daughter.

Fothergill died on July 28, 1891, still relatively young. Though she is not as widely read today as some of her Victorian peers, her work remains of interest for its strong-willed heroines, European settings, and willingness to push against the expectations placed on women in fiction.