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1806-1876
Born in London on 11 November 1806, the daughter of Revd Lascelles Iremonger, prebendary of Winchester and his second wife, Harriet. Christened as Henrietta Georgiana Marcia Lascelles she married Sir William Abraham Chatterton of Castle Mahon, co. Cork in 1824. The couple suffered financial problems and lived more frugally in Dorset and, from 1852 at Rolls Park in Essex. Sir William died in 1855 and she was married again four years later to Edward Heneage Dering. In 1867 the couple went to live at Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire, forming what has been termed a menage-a-quatre with the owner of the property, Marmion Edward Ferrers, and his wife Rebecca, Georgiana's niece. A year before her death in 1876 Georgiana converted to the Roman Catholic faith, following her Edward's lead some years earlier. Her life was commemorated in a biography by him, published in 1878.
Henrietta Georgiana Lascelles was the author of a copious number of romantic novels as well as biographical and travel works. Her first work was published anonymously in two volumes under the title Aunt Dorothy's Tales (1837). Thereafter she used the name Georgiana Chatterton for all her published work. Her style has been described as "uniformly unmemeorable" and on her death "her financial position seems to have affected neither the quantity nor the type of her writing" (Dictionary of National Biography).
George Eliot was scathing about Georgiana Chatterton in an essay published in the Westminster Review entitled Silly Novels by Lady Novelists.
There are few women, we suppose, who have not seen something of children under five years of age, yet in "Compensation," a recent novel of the mind-and-millinery species, which calls itself a "story of real life," we have a child of four and a half years old talking in this Ossianic fashions:
"Oh, I am so happy, dear gran'mamma; - I have seen, - I have seen such a delightful person: he is like everything beautiful, - like the smell of sweet flowers and the view from Ben Lomond; - or no, better than that - he is like what I think of and see when I am very very happy; and he is really like mamma, too when she sings; and his forehead is like that distant sea," she continued, pointing to the blue Mediterranean; "there seems no end - no end; or like the clusters of stars I like best to look at on a warm fine night . . . Don't look so . . . your forehead is like Loch Lomond, when the wind is blowing and the sun is gone; I like the sunshine best when the lake is smooth . . . So now - I like it better than ever . . . it is more beautiful still from the dark cloud that has gone over it, when the sun suddenly lights up all the colours of the forests and shining purple rocks, and it a all reflected in the maters below."
We are not surprised to learn that the mother of this infant phenomenon, who exhibits symptoms so alarmingly like those of adolescence repressed by gin, is herself a phoenix. We are assured, again and again, that she had a remarkably original mind, that she was a genius, and "conscious of her originality," and she was fortunate enough to have a lover who was also a genius, and a man of "most original mind.
Aunt Dorothy's tale, or Geraldine Morton (1837)
A good match, The heiress of Drosberg, and The cathedral chorister (1839)
Allanston, or the infidel (1843)
Lost happiness, or the effects of a lie, a tale (1845)
Compensation; a story of real life thirty years ago (1856)
Life and its realities (1857)
The reigning beauty (1858)
The heiress and her lovers (1863)
Country coteries (1868)
The lost bride (1872)
Won at last (1874)
Some of these were privately printed.
Rambles in the South of Ireland (1839)
Home sketches and foreign recollections (1841)
The Pyrenees, with excursions into Spain (1843)
Reflections on the history of the Kings of Judah (1848)
Extracts from Jean Paul F. Richter (1851)
Memorials of Admiral Lord Gambier (1861)
Selections from the works of Plato (1862)
Leonore, a tale, and other poems (1864)
Quagmire ahead (1864)
Grey's Court [edited by Lady Chatterton] (1865)
Oswald of Deira, a drama (1867)
A plea for happiness and hope (1867)
The oak, original tales and sketches by Sir J. Bowring, Lady Chatterton, and others (1869)
Lady May, a pastoral poem (1869)
Extracts from Aristotle's work (1875)
Misgiving (1875)
Convictions (1875)
The consolation of the devout soul by J. Frassinetti, translated by Lady Chatterton (1876)
Many of the works of Georgiana Chatterton are available to view online through Google Books, including the full text of The reigning beauty, Life and its realities and The heiress and her lovers.
Compensation; a story of real life thirty years ago (1856) is available from the University of Pensylvania.
Her husband wrote a biography shortly after her death:
Memoirs of Georgiana, Lady Chatterton by E. H. Dering (1878)
Page created 31 July 2009 and last
updated 31 July 2009
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