Elizabeth Meeke

Elizabeth Meeke (13 November 1761 – c. October 1826?) was a prolific English author, and the stepsister of Frances Burney. She wrote around 30 novels published by the Minerva Press during the late eighteenth and early 19th centuries, most under the name of Mrs. Meeke, some under the pseudonym Gabrielli, and a few anonymously. Formerly speculated to be Mary Meeke, the wife of a Staffordshire vicar, "Mrs. Meeke" was conclusively identified as Elizabeth Meeke in an article by Simon Macdonald in 2013. She is believed to have died around October 1826.

Meeke's first published novel was Count St Blanchard in 1795; others include The Abbey of Clugny, The Mysterious Wife, Anecdotes of the Altamont Family, and Which is the Man? Her works include several translations from French, e.g. Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia.

The third edition of Chamber's Cyclopaedia of English Literature gave a disparaging assessment of her work:

Bibliography

Novels
Count St. Blancard, or the Prejudiced Judge (1795)
The Abbey of Clugny (1795)
Palmira and Ermance (1797)
The Mysterious Wife (as by Gabrielli) (1797)
The Sicilian (anonymous) (1798)
Harcourt (anonymous) (1799)
Ellesmere (1799)
Anecdotes of the Altamont Family (anonymous) (1800)
Which is the Man? (1801)
The Mysterious Husband (as by Gabrielli) (1801)
Midnight Weddings (1802)
Independence (as by Gabrielli) (1802)
Amazement! (1804)
The Old Wife and the Young Husband (1804)
The Nine Days' Wonder (1804)
Something Odd! (anonymous) (1804)
The Wonder of the Village (anonymous) (1805)
Something Strange (as by Gabrielli) (1806)
"There Is a Secret, Find It Out!" (1808)
Langhton Priory (as by Gabrielli) (1809)
Stratagems Defeated (as by Gabrielli) (1811)
Matrimony, the Height of Bliss or Extreme of Misery (1811)
Conscience (1814)
Spanish Campaigns, or The Jew (1815)
The Veiled Protectress, or the Mysterious Mother (1818)
What Shall Be, Shall Be (1823)

Translations
A Tale of Mystery, or Celina, by François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil (1803)
Lobenstein Village, by August Lafontaine (1804) 
Julian, or, My Father's House, by François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil (1807) 
The Unpublished Correspondence of Madame du Deffand (1810)
Messiah, by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (with Mary Collyer) (1811)
Elizabeth, or, the Exiles of Siberia, by Sophie Ristaud Cottin (1817)

Children's books
The Birth-Day Present
Mamma's Gift
The Parent's Offering to a Good Child

References

External links

Category:1761 births
Category:1826 deaths
Category:19th-century English novelists
Category:English women novelists
Category:19th-century British women writers
Category:19th-century British writers