Helena Wells
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Helena Wells, later Whitford (1761?-1824) was an American-English novelist and writer at the end of the eighteenth century.
[edit] Biography
Helena Wells was born in South Carolina, the daughter of the printer and bookseller Robert Wells (1727/8-1824), who had emigrated from Scotland in the 1750s. The title page of The Stepmother describes her as living in Charleston, South Carolina; she "seems to have been a Loyalist who later served as a governess in London"[1]. According to the ODNB, Wells ran a school in London with her sister from 1789 to 1799, and the subject-matter of Letters on Subjects of Importance to the Happiness of Young Females suggests a switch of career to that of governess.[2] In 1801 she married Edward Whitford, and had four children.
[edit] Works
Novels
- The Stepmother: a domestic Tale from real life, 1798, 2 vols.
- Constantia Neville; or, The West Indian, 1800. 3 vols.
Non-fiction
- Letters on Subjects of Importance to the Happiness of Young Females, 1799; 2nd edition 1807.
- Thoughts and remarks on establishing an institution for the support and education of unportioned respectable females, 1809.
[edit] References
- ^ J. D. Hart, Oxford Companion to American Literature, 1941
- ^ Jane McDermid, ‘Wells , Helena (1761?–1824)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 8 Nov 2007
