Emma Jane Guyton

Emma Jane Guyton or Worboise (1825–1887), was an English novelist and editor.

Contents

Life

Guyton was born Emma Jane Worboys in Birmingham on 20 April 1825 to George Baddeley Worboys (c. 1803–1867), a gunsmith, and his wife, Maria Lane (c. 1807–post 1887). She was a lifelong Congregationalist. She attended boarding school and may have worked as a governess.

Though Guyton described herself late in life as the widow of a Mr Etherington Guyton, a Baptist minister of French descent, no evidence for the existence of such a person has been found. She began to suffer from alcoholism, which brought about her death on 25 August 1887 at Clevedon, Somerset.[1]

Writings

Guyton's first book, published under the name Worboise, was the novel Alice Cunningham (1846). It was followed by about fifty other novels with a Christian message, which were very popular in their time. Thornycroft Hall (1864), Crystabel (1873) and A Woman's Patience (1879) are among titles to have been reissued in print-on-demand editions.[2] The theology that underlies Guyton's novels has attracted some critical attention.[3]

Guyton greatly admired Dr Thomas Arnold, the educational reformer and headmaster of Rugby School, whose life she published in 1859. She began to write for the newspaper Christian World in 1857. She edited the monthly Christian World Magazine and Family Visitor from 1866 to 1885, and many of her novels were serialized there.[4]

External resource

References

  1. ^ ODNB entry: Retrieved 20 July 2011. Subscription required.
  2. ^ E. g., Dodo Press, 2008, ISBN 9781409913047; 2008, ISBN 1409913015; 2009, ISBN 1409971651, respectively.
  3. ^ E. g. in Julie Melnyk, ed.: Women's Theology in Nineteenth-century Britain... (New York/London: Garland, 1998). ISBN 0815327935
  4. ^ ODNB entry.

 "Guyton, Emma Jane". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.