L. T. Meade
L. T. Meade, born Elizabeth Thomasina Meade on June 5, 1844, in Bandon, County Cork, Ireland, was a prolific writer known for her contributions to children's literature, particularly stories aimed at young girls. Raised in a Protestant household during a time when women were often discouraged from pursuing careers, she demonstrated talent for storytelling from a young age. After moving to London, she found a supportive environment that allowed her to develop her writing, contrasting sharply with her restrictive upbringing. Meade's works often explored the lives of London's poor children, including themes of resilience and moral transformation through Christian values. As her career progressed, she shifted to include more adventurous narratives and strong female protagonists who actively engage in their own stories. Her legacy continued posthumously, with many unpublished works being released after her death on October 26, 1914, in Oxford, England. Meade's emphasis on character-driven narratives and moral lessons left a lasting impact on children's literature of her time.
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L. T. Meade
Writer
- Born: June 5, 1844
- Birthplace: Bandon, County Cork, Ireland
- Died: October 26, 1914
- Place of death: Oxford, England
Biography
L. T. Meade was the pen name of Elizabeth Thomasina Meade, who was born on June 5, 1844, in Bandon, County Cork, Ireland. Her father, the Reverand Richard Thomas Meade, was a Protestant minister in that largely Catholic country, then under the government of the English crown. One of six children, she was educated at home by a governess and showed a strong imagination, entertaining her siblings with stories of fanciful happenings. She soon began writing down her stories, and by the time she was fifteen she had written a publishable book. However, when she decided she wished to make a life of writing, her father was scandalized. In that time, it was considered shameful for a woman from a respectable family to earn her own living rather than rely upon male family members for support.
After her mother died and her father remarried, Meade no longer felt at home under his roof and moved to London, where she soon found a publisher. Furthermore, she found a work space in the British Museum, where she was taken seriously as a professional writer and writing supplies were made available to her, a stark contrast to her father’s practice of denying her paper in order to curb what he saw as a bad and wasteful habit. Since it would have been unthinkable for a respectable woman to have lived alone in those days, she lived with friends, a doctor and his wife. They pointed her to some interesting possibilities for exposé novels, similar to the social criticism novels written by Benjamin Disraeli as he was building his career.
Many of Meade’s novels dealt with the poor children of London and their travails, including stories of homeless children, runaways, and orphans abandoned to make their living as best they could. Many of the books had a strong religious component, with the characters’ lives being transformed through Christian teaching and a personal spiritual encounter with Christ as savior, not surprising in a time when it was expected that children’s literature should have a clearly stated moral. As she became more successful and could afford to take risks, she became less openly didactic and wrote several delightful stories of children in nature, including one of castaway children reminiscent of The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner (1719) or The Swiss Family Robinson (1818).
In her later years Meade wrote a number of books featuring strong female protagonists who, as much as was possible in that time and place, took charge of their own lives and resolved the conflicts of their stories rather than passively waiting for others to save them. A number of these novels took place at the schools for girls that were becoming common in the latter half of the Victorian era. Although Meade died on October 26, 1914, in Oxford, England, she had produced such a large volume of unpublished work that novels continued to appear under her name for a number of years after he death.