Publisher's Synopsis
Emily Jolly (1834-1917): Emily Jolly was born Margate, the elder daughter of Thomas Jolly, the one-time mayor of Bath. (Her brother William Cracknell Jolly also served a term as mayor.) As a young woman she began writing fiction, beginning with "A Wife's Story" first published in Dickens's Household Words in 1855. She followed with nearly a dozen novels. In the 1870s, Jolly gave up writing fiction. She never married and lived for twenty years with Emily Dobell, the widow of the poet Sydney Dobell (d. 1874). Jolly edited a life and letters of the poet in 1878. After Dobell's death in 1900, she moved to Dorset where she died in 1917. Excerpt Drawing near an open window, by which she meant to enter, the sound of voices reached her, and she quietly retreated. A last look towards the moor showed her that nothing moved along its edge now. After a moment's irresolute pause, she drew her shawl over her head, gipsey fashion, went through the shrubbery, out by a little gate into the lane. She slowly followed the winding way for some distance, then drew back into the shadow of a group of firs in the hedge-row, and stood still.
