Beth Ellis

Biography

The daughter of a prominent English solicitor, Ellis was born in the northern town of Wigan, near Manchester, in 1874. She studied English literature at Oxford University in the era before women were permitted to take degrees there. In 1899 she published An English girl's first impressions of Burmah, a humorous account of a recent six-month stay in what is today Myanmar, then part of British India. Six novels and a collection of short stories followed. Most of these books were historical romances. Though she married in 1908, Ellis continued to publish under her maiden name until her death in childbirth in 1913.

Reception

Ellis's work met with generally favorable reviews. Assessing her final novel in 1913, the reviewer for The Bookman (London) wrote: "Among present-day writers of historical novels I should place Miss Beth Ellis very highly. There is a swing and a cheerfulness in her writing which are particularly attractive; she has an accurate knowledge of her periods; and her characters are very decidedly not the inhuman puppets of the average of historical fiction." Negative reviews tended to deprecate Ellis's choice of genre, rather than her competence within it. As the New York Times wrote of her fourth novel in 1910: "The book is a good one of its kind. But, of course, some censorious reader will inevitably ask: 'Has not its kind been done to death?'" Today Ellis is remembered chiefly for her book on Burma, described by one authority as "one of the funniest travel books ever written."

Writings

The British and Canadian editions appeared under the name Beth Ellis, the American ones under the name Elizabeth Ellis.

Selections of Ellis's work have also appeared in the following anthologies:

Adaptations