Small image of a man handing a book to a women across a counter.

At the Circulating Library

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

Author: Fanny Charlotte Montgomery

Author: Fanny Charlotte Montgomery (1820–1893)

Alternate Name(s): Wyndham (maiden name)

Biography: Fanny Charlotte Montgomery was born in 1820, the second daughter of Lord George Wyndham, first Baron Leconfield. In 1842 she married Alfred Montgomery, the third son of a baronet and commissioner of the Inland Revenue (1845–1882). (Her husband was also reputed to be the natural son of the elder brother of the Duke of Wellington.) The couple were well-connected socially: Alfred was a friend of the Prince of Wales and Fanny the friend of the Prime Minister Disraeli. Of their three children, Sybil married (and divorced) John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensbury, and was the mother of Lord Alfred Douglas. She wrote two nonfictional works and a collection of poems shortly after her marriage, then she produced four novels: the moralistic Ashton Hall; or, Self-Seeking and Self-Denying: a Tale of Daily Life (1846), the gothic The Bucklyn Shaig (1865), Mine Own Familiar Friend (1872), and the sensational The Wrong Man (1873). In the 1870s, she converted to Roman Catholicism and wrote a handful of devotional works. She died in 1893 in Naples.

References: Boase; Burke; Neil McKenna, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (2005)

Fiction Titles:

  1. Ashton Hall: or, Self-Seeking and Self-Denying. A Tale of Daily Life.  1 vol.  London: Rivington, 1846.
  2. The Bucklyn Shaig: A Tale of the Last Century.  2 vol.  London: Bentley, 1865.
  3. Mine Own Familiar Friend.  3 vol.  London: Hurst and Blackett, 1872.
  4. The Wrong Man.  2 vol.  London: Hurst and Blackett, 1873.
  5. On the Wing: A Southern Flight.  1 vol.  London: Hurst and Blackett, 1875.