Pen name Charlotte Elizabeth Name Charlotte Tonna Period 19th century | Nationality English Occupation Writer (novelist) Role Writer | |
 | ||
Born 1 October 1790
Norwich, Norfolk, England ( 1790-10-01 ) Genre evangelical Protestant literature,
poetry,
Children's Literature Died July 12, 1846, Ramsgate, United Kingdom Books Helen Fleetwood, Personal recollections, The works of Charlotte Elizabeth, Kindness to Animals Or The Si, Promising and performing | ||
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna (1 October 1790 – 12 July 1846) was a popular Victorian English writer and novelist who wrote as Charlotte Elizabeth. Her work focused on promoting women's rights (see her books The Wrongs of Women and Helen Fleetwood) and evangelical Protestantism. She went deaf at the age of 10. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote of her memoir Personal Recollections (1841): "We know of no piece of autobiography in the English language which can compare with this in richness of feeling and description and power of exciting interest."
Contents
Life
She was the daughter of Michael Browne, rector of St. Giles's Church and minor canon of Norwich Cathedral, where she was born on 1 October 1790. In 1813 she married Captain George Phelan of the 60th regiment, and spent two years with him while he served with his regiment in Nova Scotia (1817–1819). They then returned to Ireland, where Phelan owned a small estate near Kilkenny. The marriage was not a happy one, and they separated about 1824. Mrs Phelan subsequently resided with her brother, Captain John Browne, at Clifton, where she made the acquaintance of Hannah More. She later moved to Sandhurst, and then to London. In 1837 Captain Phelan died in Dublin, and in 1841 Charlotte married Lewis Hippolytus Joseph Tonna. She died at Ramsgate on 12 July 1846, and was buried there.
Writing career
While in Ireland Mrs. Tonna began to write, as "Charlotte Elizabeth," tracts for various religious societies. She was very hostile to the Catholic Church, and some of her publications are said to have been placed on the Index Expurgatorius. In 1837 she published an abridgment of Foxe's Book of Martyrs. She edited The Protestant Annual, 1840, and The Christian Lady's Magazine from 1836, and The Protestant Magazine from 1841 until her death. She also wrote poems, two of which, The Maiden City and No Surrender, were written specially for the Orange cause. Writing in 1899, O'Donoghue stated that these "are extremely vigorous and popular. They are quite the best Orange songs that have been written."