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At the Circulating Library

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

Author: Alfred Whaley Cole

Author: Alfred Whaley Cole (1823–1896)

Biography: Alfred Whaley Cole was born in 1823 in London, the son of William Nicholas Cole of Havre de Grace, France. As a youth, he traveled to South Africa where he spent five years (1841–1846). When he returned to London, Cole entered the Middle Temple (1847), wrote a book about his South African experiences, The Cape and the Kaffirs; or, Notes of Five Years Residence in South Africa (1852), and became a contributor to Household Words. In 1850, he was called to the bar and married Eliza Hill Whitfield. He wrote a handful of poetic and comic works and two novels, Hope: A Tale of Chequered Life (1853) and The Honeymoon (1855). In 1856, Cole returned to Cape Town where he was elected four times to the Cape parliament, served as judge (beginning 1880), and edited the Cape Monthly Magazine. He died in 1896, shortly after he wrote a memoir, Reminiscences of my Life and of the Cape Bench and Bar.

Author Tags:

References: Allibone; Men at the Bar (1885); South African Dictionary of National Biography

Fiction Titles:

  1. Hope: A Tale of Chequered Life.  3 vol.  London: T. C. Newby, 1853.
  2. The Honeymoon.  1 vol.  London: James Blackwood, 1855.
  3. Lorimer Littlegood, Esq: A Young Man who Wished to see Society, and Saw it Accordingly.  1 vol.  London: James Blackwood, 1858.