User:Cdefm/Elizabeth Janet Jennings

Elizabeth Janet Jenings (née Plues; 1818–1863) was an English novelist. She authored two novels shortly before her death My good for Nothing Brother, under the pseudonym Wycliffe Lane, and Thyra Gascoigne, published posthumously under the name Mrs. Edmund Jenings.

Life
Elizabeth Janet Jenings was born in 1818 in Ripon, Yorkshire. She was the second daughter of Rev. William Plues, headmaster of Ripon Grammar School, and Hannah Swire. She was elder sister to Margaret Plues.

In 1852  she married Edmund John Jenings of Fir Trees, Hawkhurst, Kent and they had one son.

She died in 1863, in Cranbrook and was buried in Hawkhurst, Kent.

Career
Relatively late in life she authored two novels: My Good for Nothing Brother and Thyra Gascoigne. "‘My Good for Nothing Brother,’ was published in the spring, with a success that was due to the real merits, the originality, and excellent promise of the author…The hand is cold that wrote it, and we have one pure-minded, clear-headed, and high-principled author the less, just too when writers of such quality are least to be spared. - The Athenaeum, 1863"My Good for Nothing Brother was published shortly before Jenings’ death under the pseudonym Wycliffe, or Wickliffe, Lane. It features an ambitious woman blatantly marrying for money. But Jenings was particularly concerned about the tainting of marriage by materialism. It is ‘a tale in which maxims of morality and expressions of piety abound in every page…in a style which treats religion and religious subjects with far too much of easy familiarity and jocose levity.’

Thyra Gascoigne, later re-titled John Douglas’s Vow, was published posthumously under the name Mrs. Edmund Jenings, sometimes spelled Jennings. Jenings completed the book and it was ready for publication ‘when death came suddenly’. It was dedicated to ‘the beloved memory’ of its author.

Thyra Gascoigne depicts the descent, the fatal attraction and terrible consequences of a gambler. His long-suffering wife, Thyra, is the heroine who at the end rises out of the misery into true nobility and grandeur.

At the time the book did not receive a good review, The Morning Post described it as ‘an impulsive, emotional, rather spasmodic story’ and wrote that ‘the author did not possess the faculty of describing men, of realising their lives, or analysing their characters; women rarely do possess it; but her deficiency is conspicuous’. Giving some credit The Morning Post continued, ‘when the author deals with the feelings, the trials, the faults of women, it is with perfect comprehension, insight and sympathy.’

Works

 * My Good for Nothing Brother: A Novel (1862)
 * Thyra Gascoigne,  3 volumes  (1863)
 * John Douglas's Vow; Or, Thyra Gascoigne (1867)