Notable Women Authors of the Day: Biographical Sketches

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Portraits have been moved from the middle of the chapter to the beginning of the same. Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of the chapter in which they appear. Obvious errors have been silently corrected.



These sketches originally appeared as a series in the Lady's Pictorial and are republished with the Editor's kind permission.
They are now revised, enlarged and brought up to date.
Helen C. Black



A blue sky and a bright sun belie the typical foggy month of November, and while entering the elevator which glides rapidly and smoothly to the eighth floor of the gigantic pile of buildings once cynically termed Hankey's Folly —now Queen Anne's Mansions—you feel justified in anticipating a glorious view over the great city. You step out into a corridor where are arranged a stand of grenades with a couple of hydrants, backed by printed directions for their use, and are shown into the library of the distinguished author; but ere there is time to look around, the door opens, and Mrs. Lynn Linton enters.
Her personality may be described thus: tall, upright, and stately in appearance, the keen, but kindly bright blue eyes smiling through the gold-rimmed glasses which she always wears. She is clad in a suitable black dress, trimmed with jet, a white lace cap partially covers the thick grey hair, which escapes in a tiny natural curl or two on each side of the smooth, in tellectual forehead. The eyebrows—far apart—are straight and level, but shaded off so delicately that they impart a look of benignity and softness to the aristocratic nose, while the curves of the well-cut lips indicate straightforwardness, sincerity of disposition, and power. Can it be possible that you had felt a momentary trepidation before meeting the gifted woman for whose genius you have ever entertained the greatest reverence? But Mrs. Lynn Linton will have none of it! Her kind and friendly greeting puts you at once at ease. She says that she has an hour or two to spare, that her work is well on, and that there is no immediate fear of her being disturbed by an emissary from the printers, so you settle down to have a good talk, and to learn from your hostess some particulars of her early life, and her subsequent eventful career.