Author talk:Emily Frances Adeline Sergeant

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Meeting her in 1892, the gossip-columnist for Winter’s Magazine, “Mrs. Gadabout,” saw “a wee little woman, rather buxom, with a mass of fair hair turned loosely back from her face, a fair skin, ruddy complexion, keen bluish grey eyes and as wide-awake as a pure-bred Skye terrier. A natty little woman: she, too, uses a stenographer and has a great ambition to do six thousand words in a day.” This ambition led to a nervous breakdown in 1892, just after Sergeant had submitted her chapter for The Fate of Fenella. Thereafter her health was always fragile, presumably not helped by her punishing schedule. In her own day, Sergeant’s admirers compared her to George Eliot; she could have been as good, it was suggested, if she had the time and space. Instead, she wrote unceasingly, recognising “few limits to the privileges of invention and possess[ing] one of the most fluent of pens.”