Women Novelists of Queen Victoria's Reign

It is hardly necessary to state that this beautiful and charming woman was the second daughter of Thomas Sheridan and grand-daughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, of Regency renown. She was one of three sisters famous for beauty and brains, the eldest of whom married Lord Dufferin, and the youngest Lord Seymour, afterwards Duke of Somerset.

Born in the first decade of the present century, she married at nineteen, in 1827, George Norton, brother of the third Lord Grantley -- a union which proved most unhappy. In 1836 Mr. Norton sought for a divorce, in an action which entirely failed. Nevertheless, Norton remained irreconcilable, and availed himself of all the powers which the law then lent to a vindictive husband, claiming the proceeds of his wife's literary work, and interfering between her and her children. But it is with Mrs. Norton as a writer rather than as a woman that we are concerned, and it is useless now to dwell upon the story of her wrongs and struggles.