Lifespan: c1750- 1816
Nationality: English
Types of Work: Novels
Other Names: Gabrielli, sometimes ascribed as Mary and sometimes as Elizabeth
Bio:
(From Wikipedia)
Elizabeth Mary Meeke (died 1816?) was a prolific English author. She wrote around 30 novels published by the Minerva Press during the early 19th century, and is believed to have died in October 1816.
She sometimes used the pseudonym Gabrielli, and probably married a clergyman and poet, the Reverend Francis Meeke (B.A. 1773, M.A. 1776, Cambridge). Her first published novel was Count St Blanchard in 1795; others include The Abbey of Cluny, The Mysterious Wife, Anecdotes of the Altamont Family, and Which is the Man?. Her works include several translations from French, e.g. Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia.
The third edition of Chamber's Cyclopaedia of English Literature gave a disparaging assessment of her work:
The novels are worthless and would be quite forgotten but for the mention of them in the Life of Macaulay, who in his younger days at least "all but knew them by heart". According to Macaulay's sister the most of them turn on the fortunes of some young man in a very low rank of life who ultimately proves to be the son of a duke.
"Our public schools," Mary Meeke said in her time, "are mere hot-beds for the encouragement of vice and dissipation, which flourish in still greater perfection at college; and as for the grand tour, "why, half those who undertake it return greater fools than they set out".
Novels:
Count St Blanchard (1795)
The Abbey of Cluny (1795)
Palmira and Ermance (1797)
Ellesmere (1799)
Which is the Man (1801)
Midnight Weddings (1802)
A Tale of Mystery, or Selina (1803)
Amazement, a Novel (1804)
The Old Wife and the Young Husband
Murray House
The Nine Days' Wonder (1804)
Ellen, Heiress of the Castle (1807)
Martrimony at the Height of Bliss or Extreme Misery (1811)
Conscience (1814)
Spanish Campaigns, or the Jew (1815)
The Veiled Protectress of the Mysterious Mother (1818)
What Shall be Shall Be (1823 Posthumously)
Under the Pseudonym "Gabrielli":
Count St Elancard
The Mysterious Wife (1797)
The Mysterious Husband
Harcourt (1799)
Independence (1802)
Something Odd (1804)
Something Strange (1806)
Laughton Priory (1809)
Stratagems Defeated (1811)