A Master of Mysteries

Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith (1844 1914) wrote a lot of stories for girls. Her father was the Rev. R. T. Meade of Nohoval, County Cork, and she was born in Bandon, County Cork. After that, she went to London and got married to Alfred Toulmin Smith in September 1879. She started writing, when she was 17 years old and finished over 280 books, during her lifetime. In fact, eleven new books with her name on them came out in first few years, after she died, showing how productive she was. Most people knew her for her books for kids. The most popular was "A World of Girls" which came out in 1886. 37,000 versions of "A World of Girls" were sold, and it had a big impact on school stories for girls in the 20th century. She did, however, write "sentimental" and "sensational" stories, religious stories, historical books, adventure stories, romances, and mysteries, some of which were co-written by men. Dr. Clifford Halifax was the first of these. They worked together for the first time in 1893 and wrote six books together. After a year, she worked with Robert Eustace for the first time and together they published eleven books.