MISS ELEANOR MORDAUNT.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1461, 8 June 1912, Page 11

MISS ELEANOR MORDAUNT.

FIGHT FOR SUCCESS. Few novels of last autumn won higher praise than the critics gave-to "A Ship of Solace," by Miss Eleanor Mordaunt, whose new story, "The Stain," was published in April, says the "Bookman. Miss Mordaunt was born in Notts, and is the only literary member of her family, with tho exception of 'her mother's brother, Captain "the Hon. Denis Bingham, who was "The Times" correspondent, in Paris during the Franco-German War, and in addition to a record of tho siege wrote several well-known books oi Ireuch ; Tho greater part of Miss Mordaunt's girlhood was spent in a rambling old. house near Cheltenham, where her tendency to liction first revealed itself in a series of ghost stories chiefly concerned with a certain tapestried room in the house, and these were so vividly and forcefully told that they have been handed down to succeeding tenants as actual legends of the place. Here she ran practically wild with her six brothers and a much younger sister till she was h.rtcen when tho family removed .to a lonely country district in Oxfordshire, where she met with many of the .characters "ho afterwards appeared in "The barden of Contentment. ~-,,•• In IBM Miss Mordaunt wen to Mauritius whence sho returned three years later with her health completely broken Vm aria, and passed, her bra. « « ' invalid by wr ting a series ot Letters to Mr Nobody," some of which were ultimately in&ed in "Tho Garden of Con-tCMakhf-""no progress recovery, and fe fin? that if she must, die she Melbourne with J-oi in m-i i , . < „"° frith, her the happiest memories of Klia and Austral^Journahsm and here set to work on a new line, sne wroxe seW Tories for boys, a serial offers f„n' a ri n g under a man's name in Young jeTwork for "Muck and White." «»< finallv. not knowing what, to do. for He SSrtVr where to turn for a mug I wr ote. ." !'"d

Wallaby through Victoria." Few women writers havo gono through, rougher experiences or turned them to moro excellent account.