Mary Cholmondeley was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 novelist.

The daughter of the vicar at St Luke's Church in the village of Hodnet, Market Drayton

Market Drayton

Market Drayton is a small market town in north Shropshire, England. It is on the River Tern, between Shrewsbury and Stoke-on-Trent, and was formerly known as "Drayton in Hales" and earlier simply as "Drayton" ....

, Shropshire

Shropshire

Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, where she was born, Cholmondeley spent much of the first thirty years of her life taking care of her sickly mother. Members of her family were involved in the literary world, notably her uncle Reginald Cholmondeley of Condover Hall

Condover Hall

Condover Hall is an elegant Grade I listed three story Elizabethan sandstone building, described as the grandest manor house in Shropshire, standing in a conservation area on the outskirts of Condover village, Shropshire, England, four miles south of the county town of Shrewsbury.A Royal manor in...

, who was a friend of the American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 novelist, Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

.

Growing up, Cholmondeley liked to tell stories to her siblings and turned to writing fiction as an escape from the monotony of her daily routine. Her diary showed that by the age of 18 she was already convinced she would never marry, lacking, she believed, the looks and the charms necessary to attract a suitable mate. Novelist Rhoda Broughton

Rhoda Broughton

Rhoda Broughton was a novelist.-Life:Rhoda Broughton was born in Denbigh in North Wales on 29 November 1840. She was the daughter of the Rev. Delves Broughton youngest son of the Rev. Sir Henry Delves-Broughton, 8th baronet. She developed a taste for literature, especially poetry, as a young girl...

 introduced her to George Bentley of Richard Bentley and Son, prominent London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 book publishers who had published some of the early works of Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

.

Cholmondeley's first book was published under the title, Her Evil Genius and shortly thereafter in 1886, her second work The Danvers Jewels earned her a small, but respectable following. In 1896 her family moved to the village of Condover temporarily before settling permanently in London, where she wrote the 1899 satirical novel Red Pottage, for which she is best remembered.

Although shy because of her isolated background, she became friends with some of the well-known literary figures of the time and in addition to more than a dozen novels, Cholmondeley wrote essays, articles and short stories.

As she believed would happen, she died at age 66 without ever having married.

Her niece, Stella Benson

Stella Benson

Stella Benson was an English feminist, travel writer, and novelist.-Early life:Benson was born to Ralph Beaumont Benson , a member of the landed gentry, and Caroline Essex Cholmondeley at Lutwyche Hall in Shropshire in 1892. Stella's aunt, Mary Cholmondeley, was a novelist. Stella was often ill...

(1892–1933), also became a novelist.

Selected writings

• The Danvers Jewels (1886)
• Sir Charles Danvers (1889)
• Let Loose (1890)
• Diana Tempest (1893)
• Devotee: An Episode in the Life of a Butterfly (1897)
• Red Pottage (1899)
• Prisoners (1906)
• The Lowest Rung (1908)
• Moth and Rust (1912)
• After All (1913)
• Notwithstanding (1913)
• Under One Roof (1917)

External links

• Literary Heritage - West Midlands profile and e-texts of her novels