ABSTRACT
Mrs Henry Wood had, like Ouida, been ‘discovered’ by Ainsworth, when she submitted short stories to Bentley’s Miscellany and to the New Monthly magazine, which at that time he owned. She was born Ellen Price, in 1814, the daughter of a scholarly and prosperous glove-manufacturer in Worcester, but was brought up by her maternal grandmother. All her life she was afflicted by a curvature of the spine, and consequently had to write while sitting in a reclining chair with her paper on her knees. S. M. Ellis wrote: ‘Harrison Ainsworth, as a personal friend of Mrs Henry Wood, did his best to further publication of the work in book form, for he fully perceived the future prospects of popular success in East Lynne and its author. The last book William Tinsleys published for Mrs Riddell was Her Mother’s Darling in 1877: they had published numerous novels, as well as a collection of her short stories.
