A Carrickfergus-born author who became known as the ‘Queen of the Ghost Stories’ is being honoured with a blue plaque.
Charlotte Riddell (1832-1906) was one of the most successful authors of the Victorian era and will be commemorated with an Ulster History Circle blue plaque on Tuesday morning.
Having written over 50 novels and short stories, the historical group said her work probed the moral ambiguity at the heart of the newly prosperous Victorian middle-class and its “obsession” with the supernatural.
Her peers included literary heavyweights of the time including Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White) and Sheridan le Fanu.
Readers were hooked by her “sensation” novels known for the domestic scandals in the plots.
She was also linked with feminist campaigners of the time through her portrayals of the lives of women within marriage.
Before eventual critical acclaim, her early career was defined by a struggle against poverty and rejection in the male-dominated world of publishing.
Born Charlotte Cowan at The Barn in Carrickfergus, she was the youngest daughter of mill-owner James Cowan and her other from Liverpool, Ellen Kilshaw.
Recalling the writing of her first novel aged 15, she said: “It was on a bright moonlight night- I can see it now flooding the gardens- that I began, and I wrote week after week, never ceasing until it was finished.”
Early works included Tales from Boneybefore, a village close to her home.
Kingslough was also the fictitious name she chose for Carrick.
Moving to London after the death of her father, she had hoped to support her terminally ill mother through her writing.
Facing rejection for her gender and Irish origin, she had recalled: “I could not eat or sleep; I could only walk over the ‘stony-hearted streets’ and offer my manuscripts to publisher after publisher who unanimously declined them”.
Initially using male pseudonyms, she eventually began to write as Mrs J.H. Riddell after marrying civil engineer Jospeh Hadley Riddell.
His death in 1880 once again left Charlotte facing poverty, a theme that would be central to her sensation novels and ghost stories.
This included titles known for their eerie atmosphere such as the The Open Door, which explores the value of money as well as the dangers of greed.
Other themes in her work explored the dangers to women at a time when a man’s wife was regarded as his property – pointing out the link between domestic abuse and the legal arrangements around marriage.
In her later years, her life was made more comfortable after becoming the first writer to get a pension instead of a one-off grant from the Society of Authors.
After her death at Hounslow in Middlesex from breast cancer on September 24, 1906, she was buried at Heston churchyard.
Chris Spurr, chairman of the Ulster History Circle, says: “Charlotte Riddell, known as ‘the queen of ghost stories’, born at The Barn in Carrickfergus, found fame as a novelist in Victorian London.
“The Ulster History Circle is delighted to commemorate this once-popular and prolific writer with a blue plaque at the appropriate setting of Carrickfergus Library. The Circle is grateful to the Ulster-Scots Agency for their financial support towards the plaque and to Libraries NI for their kind assistance”.
The plaque will be unveiled on Tuesday, September 30, at 11.30am at Carrickfergus Library.
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