Elizabeth Thomasina Meade known as L.T. Meade (married name Toulmin Smith)

Writer, editor.

5 June 1844 – 26 October 1914

L. T. Meade – no photo credit. Hurst & Company Publishers, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Education

Educated by a governess at home.

Some Key Achievements and Interests

Wrote almost 300 books in 40 years many bestsellers.

1887 Editor for Atalanta magazine, writing and promoting fictional stories and articles about girls’/ women’s issues with older girls in mind.

Her career novels gave advice about training portrayed young women living independently. She stresses the importance of supportive networks for women and writes about her own writing experience and how she entered the profession.

1893 Interviewed in Young Woman.

1893 Stories from the Diary of a Doctor apparently originated the medical mystery subgenre.

On the managing committee of the Pioneer Club, a social group for independent women.

1890s Served on the managing committee of the Pioneer Club.

1893-1903 Active writer for The Strand Magazine.

1902-1903 Collaborated with Robert Eustace Barton on The Sorceress of the Strand.

Issues

Father denied her writing paper to discourage her from becoming an author.

She did not have a sound educational background to support her entry into her profession and stresses how important it is for women to have better opportunities for further education.

Feminists criticized the contemporary nature of her work for reinforcing gender stereotypes, likely preventing her popularity from living on to future generations.

Connection to Bloomsbury

Worked regularly in the Reading Room at the British Museum after moving to London.

Female Networks

Members of the Literary Ladies’ Dining Club including Charlotte O’Conor Eccles, Elizabeth Robins Pennell, Mrs Frank Leslie, and other literary networks.

Writing / Publications include

Short stories and essays for periodicals including Atlanta, Sunday Magazine, the Daily Mail, The Quiver and the Strand Magazine, Katharine Tynan,

For many of her books she collaborated with other writers.

1877 Scamp and I

1886 A World of Girls

1891 A Sweet Girl Graduate

1893-1896 Stories from the Diary of a Doctor

1900 A Sister of the Red Cross

1902 The Rebel of the School

1902-1903 The Sorceress of the Strand

1904 At the Back of the World

1911 Ruffles

Further Reading

Elizabeth Thomasina Meade | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Meade, L.T. (Elizabeth ‘Lillie’ Thomasina) | Dictionary of Irish Biography

Laurie Langlois Denning, Brigham Young University, “L.T. Meade’s Avaricious Anomaly: A Madame Sara, British Imperialism, and Greedy Wolfes in the Sorceress of the Strand”

Janis Dawson, “’Write a little bit every day’: L.T. Meade, Self-Representation, and the Professional Woman Writer”