Frances Ellen (Fanny) Colenso was the second daughter, and second child, of Bishop John William and Sarah Frances Colenso. Her life was cut short by tuberculosis at the age of 37 in 1887, but her talents marked her out as a woman of literary and historical importance. Her achievements are used in this book, originally a thesis awarded a masters degree in 1980 by the University of Cape Town, to compare Fanny with other women writers of her century and assess her life in terms of the stereotype of the middle-class Victorian woman.