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At the Circulating Library

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

Author: Julia Agnes Fraser

Author: Julia Agnes Fraser (1841–1915)

Biography: Julia Agnes Fraser was born in 1841 in Woolwich, Kent, the daughter of Major-General Simon Fraser of the Royal Marines. At the age of fourteen, she began writing plays, most of which were produced at small regional theatres in her father's native Scotland. Arguably her most successful drama was Dermot O'Donoghue; or, The Stranger from Belfast (1873) which played in Scotland and Ireland. She also contributed music and drama criticism to various newspapers. Fraser never married. Her father's death in the 1880s left her with a £10 annuity and she struggled financially. Her fiction includes the utopian-themed pamphlet Universal Equality: or, Jonathan Baxter's Peep into the Future (1871) and the full-length novel Shrilrick, the Drummer (1894) which garnered good reviews but poor sales. Her application to the Royal Literary Fund in 1898 chronicles her difficulties, financial and health. (They found her "literary claim insufficient.") She spent her latter years in Edinburgh and she died there in 1915.

Author Tags:

References: British Census (1881); Loeber; RLF (case number 2512)

Fiction Titles:

  1. Shrilrick, the Drummer: or, Loyal and True: A Romance of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.  3 vol.  London: Remington, 1894.