Harriette Smythies facts for kids
Harriette Smythies aka Mrs. Gordon Smythies born Harriet Maria Gordon, (1813–1883, aged 69), was an English novelist and poet. She was a prolific writer of sensation novels, publishing 20 books between 1838 and 1875.
Life
Smythies may have been born Harriet Maria Gordon in 1813 however there are other sources which suggest dates varying from 1809 to 1817. She was born to an aristocratic military family in Margate, Kent. Her parents were Jane Gordon (née Halliday) and Edward Lesmoir Gordon, a Sergeant-at-Arms. Smythie had four siblings, including a sister Jane who was a noted benefactor and a brother, Edward, who was Sergeant-at-Arms at the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838.
Smythies married Reverend William Yorick Smythies (1816-1910).
Smythies works were published primarily by Richard Bentley, Thomas Cautley Newby, and Hurst and Blackett, sometimes under the name "Mrs. Gordon Smythies." Many of her novels involve themes of love and marriage.
In 1871 her sister Jane Weld died leaving a large fortune to charity and small annuities to their mother and their sister Elizabeth Matilda Gordon. Her mother and sister tried unsuccessfully to appeal the will. Harriette was estranged from her husband who had abandoned her and his parish and she was suing him for separation. Her husband used the court case about her sister's will to establish a motive for her request for the marriage to be separated. This caused her to abandon the case and she remained actually but not legally separated from her husband until she died in 1883. Her only child was the barrister William Gordon Smythies who also became a writer.
