author
Mrs. (Elizabeth) Bonhote
1744–1818
An English novelist, essayist, and poet from Bungay, Suffolk, she is best remembered for blending moral reflection with Gothic storytelling. Her best-known book, Bungay Castle, drew on the real castle ruins her husband owned and helped keep her name alive in eighteenth-century fiction.
1 Audiobook
Bungay Castle: A Novel. v. 1/2
by Mrs. (Elizabeth) Bonhote
About the author
Born Elizabeth Mapes in Bungay, Suffolk, and baptized on April 11, 1744, she became known as Elizabeth Bonhôte after marrying Daniel Bonhôte in 1772. She wrote novels, essays, and poetry, building a literary career that moved between domestic fiction, moral writing, and more atmospheric romance.
Her published works include The Rambles of Mr. Frankly, The Fashionable Friend, The Parental Monitor, Olivia, Darnley Vale, Ellen Woodley, and Bungay Castle. That last novel became her best-known work, admired as a Gothic romance shaped by the history and setting of the actual Bungay Castle.
Bonhôte died in 1818, but her writing still offers a lively glimpse of late eighteenth-century tastes: part sentimental fiction, part social observation, and sometimes touched with the eerie pleasure of Gothic ruins. She remains an appealing figure for listeners interested in women writers of the period and in the rich variety of fiction before the Victorian novel fully took shape.