Catherine Cuthbertson

Unknowns

Cuthbertson's origins are not known, although it appears that she was born before 1780, was the daughter of an army officer, and had at least four siblings. She is thought to have died some time after her final known book appeared in 1830. Suppositions that she was a sister of Helen Craik have not been substantiated. Research in 2016 at the University of Kent revealed that "Kitty" Cuthbertson was well known in her time. A burial record discovered indicates that she died in Ealing in June 1842, possibly aged 67. This would make her date of birth about 1775.

Works

Among her works were Romance of the Pyrenees (1803), Forest of Montalbano (1810), Adelaide; or, The Countercharm (1813), Rosabella, or A Mother's Marriage (1817), The Hut and the Castle: a Romance (1823), and Sir Ethelbert; or, the Dissolution of Monasteries (1830). At least one, Santo Sebastiano (1806), was published twice in penny instalments, as The Heiress of Montalvan, or First and Second Love(1845–46) and as Santo Sebastiano, or The Heiress of Montalvan (1847–48).

Cuthbertson has been described by present-day scholars as a "fairly conventional novelist" using "historically realised settings (often in continental Europe)" with "happy endings". Her upper-class characters appear virtuous, her lower-class ones comic or on occasions horrific. There are many incidents of fainting. A recent anthologist calls her "one of the best of the Radcliffe imitators." Romance of the Pyrenees was serialized in the Lady’s Magazine starting in February 1804, "probably because the expected second sale did not warrant the cost." It took three years, and "it is the longest novel ever published in an eighteenth-century miscellany, with the single exception of Pamela." The work was also translated into French (but attributed there to Radcliffe) and German. Sir Ethelbert has been noted as having footnotes which reflect wide historical reading.