Elizabeth Caroline Grey aka Mrs. Colonel Grey or Mrs. Grey, was a prolific English author of over 30 romance novels, silver fork novels, Gothic novels, sensation fiction and penny dreadfuls

Penny Dreadful

A penny dreadful was a type of British fiction publication in the 19th century that usually featured lurid serial stories appearing in parts over a number of weeks, each part costing an penny...

, active between the 1820s and 1867. There is some controversy about the details of her life story, and if she actually authored any penny dreadfuls.

Biography

Commenting on her literary reputation in 1859, American critic Samuel Austin Allibone

Samuel Austin Allibone

Samuel Austin Allibone was an American author and bibliographer.-Biography:He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, of French Huguenot and Quaker ancestry. He was privately educated and for many years was engaged in mercantile business in his native city...

 said Grey "has fairly earned a title to be ranked as one of the most popular novelists of the day." That reputation has not lasted, her life and body of work today are fairly obscure outside of a few specialized fields of study such as Victorian literature

Victorian literature

Victorian literature is the literature produced during the reign of Queen Victoria . It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic period and the very different literature of the 20th century....

 and vampire literature. Grey is probably most often remembered today as being the first woman to write and publish a vampire story; one of her earliest stories, The Skeleton Count, or The Vampire Mistress

The Skeleton Count, or The Vampire Mistress

The Skeleton Count, or The Vampire Mistress by Elizabeth Caroline Grey is alleged by anthologist Peter Haining to be the first vampire story written and published by a woman...

, it was first published in 1828 in the weekly paper The Casket

The Casket

The Casket is a weekly paper published in Antigonish, Nova Scotia by the Casket Printing and Publishing Company. It was first published on June 24, 1852 by John Boyd.-References:...

.

Elizabeth's maiden name was Duncan and she was the niece of "Miss Duncan", a famous actress of the late 18th century. Elizabeth married "Colonel Grey", a reporter for the Morning Chronicle

Morning Chronicle

The Morning Chronicle was a newspaper founded in 1769 in London, England, and published under various owners until 1862. It was most notable for having been the first employer of Charles Dickens, and for publishing the articles by Henry Mayhew which were collected and published in book format in...

, about whom very little else is known. Elizabeth Grey worked at a London school for girls. In her spare time wrote silver fork novels, such as Sybil Lennard (1846), about a Swiss orphan who rises to become a governess in England; it has been described by John Sutherland as resembling the fiction of the Brontë

Brontë

The Brontës were a nineteenth-century literary family associated with Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte , Emily , and Anne , are well-known as poets and novelists...

 sisters. She also wrote penny dreadful

Penny Dreadful

A penny dreadful was a type of British fiction publication in the 19th century that usually featured lurid serial stories appearing in parts over a number of weeks, each part costing an penny...

s such as Murder Will Out (1860) and The Iron Mask (1847). Grey's ability to write both "proper" fiction for polite society, and sensational Gothic and penny dreadfuls (some of which were initially published anonymously), earned her a broad audience in her day.

Literary hoax

There is suspicion that not all the books attributed to Mrs. Grey were written by her, indeed that her life story as traditionally told (such as in this article) may be a total fabrication. Helen R. Smith, in “New Light on Sweeney Todd, Thomas Peckett Prest, James Malcolm Rymer and Elizabeth Caroline Grey,” came to the conclusion that James Malcolm Rymer

James Malcolm Rymer

James Malcolm Rymer was a British nineteenth century writer of penny dreadfuls, and is the probable author of Varney the Vampire and co-author of The String of Pearls , in which the notorious villain Sweeney Todd makes his literary debut.Information about Rymer is sketchy...

 was the author of a string of penny dreadfuls

Penny Dreadful

A penny dreadful was a type of British fiction publication in the 19th century that usually featured lurid serial stories appearing in parts over a number of weeks, each part costing an penny...

 confusingly attributed to Mrs. Grey. The penny dreadfuls were published by Edward Lloyd

Edward Lloyd (publisher)

Edward Lloyd was a British publisher.Born in Thornton Heath, Lloyd studied shorthand at the London Mechanics' Institution, then wrote a book on stenography. Before he was eighteen, he had opened shops in London to sell cheap books and valentines.From 1835, he began publishing cheap books, many...

, "It is hard to imagine that Elizabeth Caroline Grey, popular author of a large number of 3 volume silver fork novels, could have moonlighted as a penny-a-liner."

Grey's name never appeared in any of these penny dreadfuls published by Lloyd, but she was attributed as the author by Andrew De Ternant in an article in Notes & Queries

Notes & Queries

Notes & Queries is a weekly column in The Guardian newspaper which publishes readers' questions together with answers submitted by other readers....

in 1922. In fact, it's now known that Andrew De Ternant was a "notorious liar", as revealed in a recent investigation by Patrick Spedding in a paper "The Many Mrs Grey: Confusion and Lies about Elizabeth Caroline Grey, Catherine Maria Grey, Maria Georgina Grey and Others". Indeed, Spedding says the traditional life story of Grey, which can be ultimately sourced back to Andrew De Ternant's version, and later replicated in respectable encyclopedias such as John Sutherland's Companion to Victorian Fiction, is a total fabrication.

Works

Works by Elizabeth Caroline Grey.

• The Skeleton Count, or The Vampire Mistress
  The Skeleton Count, or The Vampire Mistress
  The Skeleton Count, or The Vampire Mistress by Elizabeth Caroline Grey is alleged by anthologist Peter Haining to be the first vampire story written and published by a woman...
  
  , in 1828's The Casket
  The Casket
  The Casket is a weekly paper published in Antigonish, Nova Scotia by the Casket Printing and Publishing Company. It was first published on June 24, 1852 by John Boyd.-References:...
  
  . (penny dreadful).
• De Lisle: or, The Distrustful man. London: Bull, 1828.
• The Trials of Life. London: E. Bull, 1829
• Alice Seymour: A Tale. London: J. Hatchard and Son. 1831
• The Duke. London: Bentley, 1839.
• The Young Prima Donna. London: Bentley, 1840.
• The Little Wife, and The Baronet's Daughters. London: Saunders and Otley, 1841.
• The Belle of the Family: or, The Jointure: A Novel. London: Newby, 1843.
• The Old Dower House: A Tale of Bygone Days. London: Newby, 1844.
• The Bosom Friend: A Novel. London: Newby, 1845.
• The Gambler's Wife. London: Newby, 1845.
• Hyacinthe; or, The Contrast. London: Newby, 1845.
• Sybil Lennard. London: Newby, 1846.
• The Ordeal by Touch. 1846. (penny dreadful)
• The Daughters. London: Newby, 1847.
• The Iron Mask. 1847. (penny dreadful)
• Aline: An Old Friend's Story. London: Newby, 1848.
• The Rectory Guest. London: Newby, 1849.
• Mabel Carrington: A Novel. London: Newby, 1849.
• An Old Country House. London: Newby, 1850.
• Mary Seaham. London: Colburn, 1852.
• The Young Husband. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1854.
• Sibyl's Little Daughter: A Sequel to The Gipsy's Daughter. London: Thomas Cautley Newby, 1854
• Cousin Harry: A Novel. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1858.
• Two Hearts Tale. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1858.
• The Opera-Singers Wife. London, 1860.
• The Little Beauty: A Novel. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1860.
• Murder Will Out. 1860. (penny dreadful)
• One of the Family. 1861.
• The Autobiography of Frank, the Happiest Dog that Ever Lived. London, 1861.
• Passages in the Life of a Fast Young Lady. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1862.
• Good Society: or, Contrasts of Character. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1863.
• Love's Sacrifice. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1867.

External works

• Works by Elizabeth Caroline Grey at Internet Archive
  Internet Archive
  The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
  
   (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
• Works by Elizabeth Caroline Grey at Google Books (scanned books original editions)