Ellinor Davenport Adams

Ellinor Davenport Adams (birth registered in the fourth quarter of 1858 – 11 April 1913) was a British journalist and writer. She wrote mainly girls’ fiction, and told her stories from the child's perspective.

Biography

Ellinor Davenport Adams had her birth registered in the fourth quarter of 1858. She was the third surviving child, and second surviving daughter of William Henry Davenport Adams (5 May 1828 – 30 December 1891), a journalist and author, and Sarah Esther Morgan (13 August 1835–1908), the daughter of shoemaker Timothy Morgan. The couple had married at St. Mary's Church in the Parish of Paddington, London on 26 December 1850.

The family as a whole were quite involved in literature and drama. Her father had over 100 books to his credit, and her eldest brother, William Davenport Adams (28 December 1851 – 26 July 1904) was a noted journalist and author. Her elder sister, Florence Mary Susan Ballingall (4th quarter 1855 – 4th quarter 1943) was also a journalist and writer, who wrote children's one-act plays, mainly about fairies. Her brother Alfred Elliot (later Davenport) Adams (1st quarter 1861 – 1947) became an actor,, and married an actress.

It is not clear what education Adams received. The census returns show no governess living in the household. Her father was himself a schoolteacher and a family tutor and may have instructed his daughters while working as an editor and generating his prolific literary output. Her father had a large library of standard works and Adams was reading these at the age when most children are reading story books. The plot of her first book concerns a nine-year-old girl who is sent to a day-school run by a retired colonel and his sister, Colonel Russell's Baby 1889. The heroine was called Lily with a father who edited a provincial newspaper, like Ellinor herself, and who does not have the time to educate her.