Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna (1790-1847) was an English author and evangelical Christian known for her prolific writing and strong religious convictions. Born Charlotte Elizabeth Browne in Norwich, she faced significant health challenges in her youth, including temporary blindness and permanent deafness. After moving to London and marrying Captain George Phelan, she eventually settled in Ireland, where she became an active writer for the Dublin Tract Society and published her first book in 1823. Tonna's later works included strident narratives and moral tales, often addressing themes of faith, social justice, and the plight of women and laborers.
She adopted the pen name Charlotte Elizabeth to keep her earnings from her estranged husband and gained recognition as a prominent voice in religious literature. In addition to writing, she was involved in community work, particularly with poor Irish immigrants in London. Her writing featured anti-Catholic sentiments and explored the struggles of factory workers. Tonna passed away in 1846 from cancer, leaving behind a legacy of over a hundred published works, some of which continued to be popular for decades after her death. Her life and writings reflect the complexities of her time, blending personal faith with broader social issues.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
Fiction and Nonfiction Writer and Poet
- Born: October 1, 1790
- Birthplace: Norwich, England
- Died: July 12, 1846
- Place of death: Ramsgate, England
Biography
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna was born Charlotte Elizabeth Browne on October 1, 1790, in rural Norwich, England. Her father, Michael Browne, was an Anglican priest and her mother was the daughter of a physician. Tonna’s family was well-off and strictly religious, and legend has it that as a child she expressed a wish to become a Christian martyr. She was a sickly child, stricken blind for several months when she was six and made permanently deaf when she was ten. These ailments did not keep her from gardening or from reading and writing. In 1812, upon the death of her father, Tonna moved with her mother to London. In a matter of months she met and married Captain George Phelan and moved with him to Nova Scotia, Canada. The couple moved to Phelan’s native Ireland in 1819.
While in Ireland, Tonna became an evangelical Christian, a hater of Roman Catholics, and a professional writer, publishing religious materials for the Dublin Tract Society. Her first book, The Shepherd Boy; and The Deluge (1823), led to more than one hundred more. When Phelan was ordered back to Canada, he and Tonna separated. She moved with her mother and an adopted deaf and mute boy to a home near Bristol, England. Here she wrote strident and essentially plotless stories and novels, including Rachel, a Tale (1826), as well as Bible stories and books like Chapters on Flowers (1836), in which gardens represent God’s blessings. To keep the proceeds from her writing away from her estranged husband, she published under the name Charlotte Elizabeth. After the death by drowning of her brother John, whom she had idolized, her work took on a more dramatic and emotional tone. In the 1830’s, she ran a Sunday school out of her home and worked with poor Irish immigrants in London.
Known as the “Fighting Protestant,” she was named founding editor of The Christian Lady’s Magazine in 1834. Most of her subsequent work appeared first in the magazine, where she published stories, chapters of novels, travel articles, and political essays. Under the pseudonym Charlotte Elizabeth, she published an autobiography, Personal Recollections, in 1841. Also in the 1840’s her work began to appear in the United States; it had already been translated and published in Italy and India. In the same decade, she met and married Lewis Tonna, another religious writer, and turned her attention for a time to social issues. She had long been interested in the plight of poor factory workers, and in The Wrongs of Woman (1843- 1844) she revealed the particular sufferings of female laborers. The novel Helen Fleetwood (1841) incorporates several of her themes, including anti-Catholicism and the inequities endured by laborers.
In July, 1846, as she was dying of cancer, The Christian Lady’s Magazine featured a farewell to her readers, declaring her happiness at her impending death. On July 12, 1846, she died at Ramsgate, beside the sea. After her death, several of her books continued to sell well for another fifty years. In the early twenty-first century, less than half a dozen of her books remained in print, in scholarly editions.