About the artist:

English Novelist. She began her career as a writer when she was just fifteen years old, when her story of "Le Chateau de Melville" was sold commercially. Her father, who had fought in the Battle of Waterloo, taught her classical languages and mathematics while tutoring her in French and Spanish. She was friendly with John Keble, a neighbor and leader in the Oxford Movement, whose parish included Otterbourne and who discovered her writing gifts and encouraged her. He also made her change some of her expressions that he and his wife thought "course", such as when, in "Heartsease" (1854), she referred to the heart as a "machine for pumping blood." In her first novel "The Heir of Redclyffe" (1853), she had to substitute such words as "Jackanapes" for "Coxcomb," as no illusions to drunkeness or insanity were allowed in books in those days. Before its publication her family had decided that it was not right for a woman to write commercially unless she devoted her earnings to some good cause. From her novel "The Daisy Chain" (1856) she gave £200 to a New Zealand missionary college. Her first works, which included "Abbey Church, or Self-control and Self-conceit" (1844), "Henrietta's Wish, of Domineering": and "Kenneth, or the Rearguard of the Grand Army" (both in 1850) were brought out anonymousy, due to her family's sensibilities about her writing. Other, later novels under her own name brought her wide fame. Such titles as "The Clever Woman of the Family" (1865) and "The Pillars of the House" (1873), and historical novels such as "The Pigeon Pie": " A tale of Roundhead Times" (1860)and "The Prince and the Page: a Story of the Last Crusade" (1865) all appealed the wide variety of her readers. Although she published 160 books, besides being the editor of "The Monthly Packet", started in 1851 to imbue young woman with the Oxford Movement, which she strongly supported along with its founder John Keble. "The Heir of Redclyffe", which appeared in 22 editions in about as many years, was eagerly read by English soldiers in the Crimean War, and Charles Kingsley is said to have wept over "Heartsease." She travelled only once out of her small village, when she visited Normandy, and, except for her writing, she devoted herself to the church and to teaching scripture at the village school. The year before she died she brought a new lychgate for St Matthew's Church with a present of £200 from subscribers to her magazine. In her last book, "Modern Broods" (1900), she contrasted the modern generation with the past one, with which she felt more in sympathy.