Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

Born Emily Florence Estelle in 1841, she became known to readers as Mrs. Lovett Cameron after marrying her husband, Henry Lovett Cameron. She was the daughter of the artist and photographer Ford Madox Brown, placing her close to an important circle of Victorian artistic life.

She turned to fiction in the 1870s and built an astonishingly productive career, writing well over 100 novels along with shorter fiction for magazines. Her stories often explored marriage, money, reputation, and the pressures of upper- and middle-class society, which helped make her a favorite with a large popular audience.

Though she is less famous now than some of her contemporaries, her work offers a lively window into Victorian tastes and everyday anxieties. She died in 1920, leaving behind a remarkable body of fiction and a strong record as one of the era's successful professional women writers.