Thorpe Talbot

Surname:

Talbot

Given names:

Thorpe

Given address:

Maori Hill

Sheet No: 124

Town/Suburb:

North Dunedin

City/Region:

Dunedin

Notes:

Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley

Frances Ellen Talbot was born in 1850 in Bradford, Yorkshire – the daughter of James Talbot, a hairdresser, and Ellen Dean.

Frances’ father appears to have left the family when she was a child as Frances and her mother emigrated to Melbourne in 1854 on the Albatross. Her mother remarried in 1854.

Frances appears to have come to New Zealand in the late 1860s .

From 1879 she started publishing stories under the name of 'Thorpe Talbot' – she was also a 'journalist, travel writer, poet and author of fiction in short, and serial forms. She became one of New Zealand’d first and most successful writers.'

In 1881 Frances won the Melbourne Leader novel competition which gained her a prize of £100 for her novel Philberta.

She took a trip to California in 1886, possibly with or to visit her mother, who died there in 1887.

Frances lived at 'The Rest' in Maori Hill, Dunedin where she signed the suffrage petition.

The house was apparently owned by Judge Charles Dudley Robert Ward who travelled for work between Dunedin and Christchurch where his wife lived.

Charles’s wife died in 1896 and he married Frances in 1902.

Charles died at 'The Rest' in 1913 – he is buried with his first wife in the All Saints Church Cemetery in Burwood, Christchurch.

Frances died on 12 March 1923 in Dunedin she is buried in the Andersons Bay Cemetery.

More can be found about her life here: https://hail.to/dunedin-unesco-city-of-literature/article/H0dkb6I