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At the Circulating Library

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

Author: Maria Norris

Author: Maria Norris (1827–1894)

Biography: Maria Norris was born in 1827 in London, the daughter of James Norris, a stationer and briefly publisher of the Railway Times. Her uncle was the paper manufacturer and M.P. John Thomas Norris (1808–1870). In 1850, she had two poems published anonymously in Household Words and over the next decade contributed to periodicals. In addition during this time, she wrote a biography The Life and Times of Madame de Staël (1853) and a novel Philip Lancaster (1854). Judging my the dedication of the latter, she knew Mary Russell Mitford who mentions her in a letter. After 1860, Norris seemed to give up writing. She removed to Newton Abbot, Devon, where she and a friend ran a school for two decades. She may have died in 1894.

Author Tags:

References: British Census (1851, 1881, 1891); Marianne Van Remoortel, Women, Work and the Victorian Periodical (Ashgate, 2015)

Fiction Titles:

  1. Philip Lancaster.  3 vol.  London: Saunders and Otley, 1854.