Elizabeth Julia Hasell

Elizabeth Julia Hasell
Born 14 November 1830
Died 17 January 1887
Dalemain
Nationality British

Elizabeth Julia Hasell (14 January 1830 – 17 January 1887) was a British miscellaneous writer and literary reviewer.

Life

Hasell was born on 14 January 1830 to Dorothea and Edward Williams Hasell who lived at Dalemain near Penrith in the Lake District. She taught herself to understand Greek, Spanish, Latin and Portuguese and at an early age she was writing plays and later narrative poems for her own amusement.[1]

It was not until 1885 that she began to have work accepted for the Quarterly Review and Blackwood's Magazine. Hasell was known for her reviews of notable publications such as Lord Derby's translation of The Iliad, Tennyson's Idylls of the King (1859), "Enoch Arden" in 1864, and Becket in 1885, and William Morris's Poems (1869).[2]

In 1877 she had important works on Calderon and Torquato Tasso published in Foreign Classics for English Readers.

In a voluntary capacity she gave talks around the area where she lived and her disregard for inclement weather is thought to have brought on her early death in the building known as Dalemain in 1887.[2]

References

  1. Robinson, Solveig C., ed. (2003). A serious occupation literary criticism by Victorian women writers. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press. p. 208. ISBN 1551113503.
  2. 2.0 2.1 Norman Moore, "Hasell, Elizabeth Julia (1830–1887)", rev. Richard Smail, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 9 Jan 2015