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At the Circulating Library

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837–1901

Author: Janet W. Wilkinson

Author: Janet W. Wilkinson (1824–1890)

Alternate Name(s): Ellerton (married name)

Biography: Janet Walker Wilkinson was born in 1824 in London, the daughter of surgeon David Wilkinson and Mary Margaret Campbell. Her father died shortly after her birth. She spent some of her early life in Wales where her uncle Alexander Reid was a landowner. A precocious child, she published a collection of poem in 1840 and followed with a novel Hands not Hearts several years later. In 1851, she married the army officer and landowner Richard Ellerton. The couple had no children and lived in Wales and southern England. Wilkinson wrote a serial "The Revelations of a Common-place Man" for Fraser's Magazine and another novel Dauntless (1858). Her husband died in 1887 and she followed in 1890 leaving behind a large fortune.

References: British Census (1851, 1861, 1871); Curran

Fiction Titles:

  1. Hands not Hearts: A Novel.  3 vol.  London: Bentley, 1849.
  2. Dauntless.  2 vol.  London: John W. Parker, 1858.