A NOTED NOVELIST.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 39, 10 September 1887, Page 2

A NOTED NOVELIST.

A GOODLY number of the vast army of novel readers will be sorry to hear of the death ot Miss Emma Jane Worboise, a most prolific lady writer of fiction. Following so soon after the death of Mrs Henry Wood, her death will make a gap in the ranks of the second rate English novelists. Miss Worboise’s stories were extremely popular with those who take exception to the ordinary fiction of the day, and being all strongly tinged with a somewhat narrow minded religious tone, were much in favour with religious periodicals whose columns needed a weekly supply of fiction, but were perforce closed to the naughtinesses of Miss Broughton or to the worldliness of Miss Mathers. A great feature of the deceased lady’s books was the almost comical animus which she had against the Roman Catholic church. A Jesuit father or a “ pervert ’’ making Roman Catholic priest were her delight, these she would drag through many a scene of triumph only to defeat them and their fell designs in the end with all the easy art of the practised writer. Possessing this peculiarity, Miss Worboise’s writings were as refined gold to the readers of “ The Christian World ” and other semi-religious journals, whose conductors love to refer to the Church of Rome as “ The Scarlet Woman ” and hold the followers of Loyola in as much abhorrence as did Kingsley’s Sir Atnyas Leigh in “ Westward Ho.” In the course of a busy career Miss Worboise got through an immense amount of work, the following being a list of her principal works : —Helen Bury, Anny Wilton, Grace Hamilton’s School Days, Kingsdown Lodge, Wife’s Trials, Millicent Kendrick, Lottie Lonsdale, Thornycroft Hall, Lillingstones of Lillingstone, Labour and Wait, Father Fabian, St. Bertha, Sir Julian’s Wife, Violet Vaughan, Chrystabel, The House of Bondage, &c.