Adeline Sergeant (4 July 1851 – 4 December 1904) was a prolific English writer.
Adeline Sergeant | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Emily Frances Adeline Sergeant  4 July 1851 Ashbourne |
| Died | 4 December 1904 (aged 53) Bournemouth |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation | Writer, poet, novelist |
Life
editBorn Emily Frances Adeline Sergeant at Ashbourne, Derbyshire, the second daughter of Richard Sergeant and Jane (Hall),[1] Adeline Sergeant was home schooled until the age of thirteen, when she attended school in Weston-super-Mare. Her mother was a writer of stories for children that were published under her pen name 'Adeline' or her pseudonym 'Adeline Hall.' Apart from her first book, which appeared under her initials, Sergeant's signed work all seems to have appeared under her preferred form of name, Adeline Sergeant.[2] At fifteen a collection of Sergeant's Poems,[3] with a short introduction by her mother, were published in a volume that received positive notice in Wesleyan periodicals. She won a scholarship to attend Queen's College, London. Her father died in 1870, and for several years she became a governess at Riverhead, Kent.[4]
One of Sergeant's first major published works for an adult audience appears to be a translation, The Chase; a tale of the Southern States, from the French of Jules Lermina (London: J.C. Nimmo & Bain, 1880). In 1882 her novel Jacobi's Wife resulted in an award of £100,[1] and the work was published serially by The People's Friend (Dundee).[4] It appeared in other newspapers as well, and on the conclusion of the serialisation in London in 1887 as a three volume novel.[5] For the next several years her writings were serialized in this Dundee publication, where she lived from 1885 to 1887. In 1888 she sold A Dead Man's Trust to W. C. Leng and Co., who ran a newspaper syndication service based in Sheffield. This story appeared in several British and Australian newspapers, but does not appear to have been published separately as a book under this title. Probably a short time later, Tillotson's Fiction Bureau, a rival operation based in Bolton, Lancashire, offered her a five-year contract to produce a full-length serial and a short story totalling around 160,000 words annually, for which she was paid £162 per annum.[6] Sergeant then moved to Bloomsbury, London, where she earned enough keep to support herself through her writings.[4] In the late 1880s she developed an interest in Fabianism and the plight of the poor in London.[2] Over her literary career, she produced over ninety novels; with some involving a religious theme. Her religious views evolved over time, including a period in the 1880s when she was briefly agnostic.[1] Finally, she converted to Catholicism at the end of the century. Adeline Sergeant served as literary adviser to the publishing company R. Bentley & Sons.[2] She frequently travelled abroad, making trips to Egypt and Palestine. In 1901 she moved to Bournemouth, where she died in 1904.[4] A biography of Adeline Sergeant appeared the following year.[7]
Bibliography
edit- Poems[8] (1866)
- Dicky and His Friends(1879)[9]
- Una's Crusade, and other tales[8] (1880)
- My Nelly's Story, and Halliday's Lads[8] (1881)[10]
- Beyond Recall[4] (1882)
- Jacobi's Wife[4] (1882)
- An Open Foe. A romance[11] (1884)
- No Saint[4] (1886)
- Roy's Repentance[11] (1888)
- Seventy Times Seven[11] (1888)
- Deveril's Diamond[12] (1889)
- A Life Sentence[11] (1889)
- The Luck of the House (1889)
- Esther Denison[4] (1889)
- Name and Fame[11] (1890)[13]
- A True Friend[11] (1890)
- Little Miss Colwyn[12] (1890)
- Brooke's daughter[11] (1891)
- Sir Anthony[12] (1892)
- Christine[11] (1892)
- The Story of a Penitent Soul[4] (1892)
- Under False Pretences[4] (1892)
- An East London Mystery[12] (1892)
- A Broken Idol[12] (1893)
- In Vallombrosa[4] (1894)
- The Surrender of Margaret Bellarmine. A fragment (1894)
- St. Maur[12] (1894)
- Christine[12] (1894)
- Dr. Endicott's Experiment[12] (1894)
- The Mistress of Quest[11] (1895)
- Out of Due Season : a mezzotint[11] (1895)
- Marjory's Mistake[12] (1895)
- Kitty Holden[12] (1895)
- No Ambition[12] (1895)
- A Deadly Foe[12] (1895)
- Erica's Husband[12] (1896)
- The Failure of Sibyl Fletcher[11] (1896)
- Roger Vanbrugh's Wife[12] (1896)
- Told in the Twilight[12] (1896)
- A Rogue's Daughter[12] (1896)
- In the Wilderness[12] (1896)
- In Vallombrosa[12] (1897)
- The Claim of Anthony Lockhart[12] (1897)
- The Idol-Maker[8] (1897)
- The Lady Charlotte[11] (1897)
- Marjory Moore's Lovers[8] (1897)
- A Valuable Life[12] (1898)
- Miss Betty's Mistake[12] (1898)
- Margaret Wynne[11] (1898)
- The Story of Phil Enderby[4] (1898)
- Blake of Oriel[12] (1899)
- The Love Story of Margaret Wynne[12] (1899)
- The Common Lot[8] (1899)
- The Conscience of Gilbert Pollard[12] (1900)
- A Rise in the World[11] (1900)
- Miss Cleveland's Companion[12] (1901)
- A Great Lady[12] (1901)
- My Lady's Diamonds[11] (1901)
- Sylvia's Ambition[12] (1901)
- This Body of Death[4] (1901)
- Daunay's tower[11] (1901)
- The Treasure of Captain Scarlett[8] (1901)
- The Marriage of Lydia Mainwaring[12] (1902)
- A Soul Apart[4] (1902)
- Barbara's Money[8] (1902)
- The Master of Beechwood[8] (1902)
- The Mission of Margaret, and other stories[8] (1902)
- Anthea's way[4] (1903)
- Beneath the Veil[4] (1903)
- Alison's Ordeal. A story for girls[8] (1903)
- Cynthia's Ideal[8] (1903)
- The Love that Overcame[8] (1903)
- The Progress of Rachel[8] (1904)
- The Yellow Diamond[8] (1904)
- Accused and Accuser[8] (1904)
- Dicky and His Friends[8] (1904)
- Nellie Maturin's Victory[8] (1905), posthumous
- The Sixth Sense[8] (1905), posthumous
- The Missing Elizabeth[8] (1905), posthumous
- An Independent Maiden[8] (1906), posthumous
- An Impetuous Girl[8] (1906), posthumous
- The Quest of Geoffrey Darrell[8] (1907), posthumous
- The House in the Crescent[8] (1907), posthumous
- The Passion of Paul Marillier[11] (1908), posthumous
- May's Cousin[8] (1909), posthumous
- My Lady's Diamonds[8] (1913), posthumous
References
edit- ^ a b c Sutherland, John (1990) [1989]. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. pp. 564–565. ISBN 0-8047-1842-3. LCCN 88061462. OCLC 634211327. OL 2064970M – via Google Books.
- ^ a b c "Overview: Adeline Sergeant (1851—1904) novelist", Oxford Index, retrieved 3 August 2016.
- ^ Poems by E. F. A. Sergeant, with an introduction by 'Adeline'
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Lee, Sidney, ed. (1912). . Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). Vol. 3. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 291–292.
- ^ The Bookseller, 4 June 1887, 548
- ^ Graham Law, Serializing Fiction in the Victorian Press, London: Palgrave, 2000, pp. 119 and 86.
- ^ Winifred Stephens (later Whale, 1870–1944), The Life of Adeline Sergeant, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1905.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z "British Library Catalogue". British Library Catalogue. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
- ^ The Saturday Review, 13 December 1879, p. 739.
- ^ Publishers' Circular, 1 November 1881, p. 947.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Ockerbloom, John Mark (ed.). Online Books by Adeline Sergeant (Sergeant, Adeline, 1851-1904). The Online Books Page. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Library. LCCN 2003557393. OCLC 36568626. Retrieved 26 February 2013.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab "At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901". At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
- ^ The Lists of the Publications of Richard Bentley & Son, 1829–1898, folio 2190, indicates this book was co-written with her cousin Lewis Sergeant (1841–1902), who used the nom-de-guerre or pseudonym 'A. S. Ewing-Lester' on the book's title page.
External links
edit
- Works by Adeline Sergeant at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Adeline Sergeant at the Internet Archive
- Works by Adeline Sergeant at Open Library
- Works by Adeline Sergeant at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
