A collection of works by a prolific Bandon born novelist of the 19th century L.T. Meade is being offered for sale privately by Fonsie Mealy auctioneers for 25,000. Elizabeth Thomasina Meade (1844-1914) was daughter of the Rev. R.T. Meade and his wife Sarah, nee Lane. Her childhood was spent at Nohoval in County Cork. She moved to London in 1874, married and subsequently lived in Oxford. She had her first book published aged 22 and thereafter her output was enormous.
Writing under the name of L.T. Meade she produced over 300 books, contributed numerous articles to periodicals and for 11 year edited a girls’ magazine – Atalanta – to which Rider Haggard and Robert Louis Stevenson contributed. She wrote for children, schoolgirls and young women and responded to the social issues of her time. Her subjects included urban poverty, lack of good looks, inability to fit in, feminism, drug addiction, detective stories with child detectives and female master criminals and the role of the “modern” woman. The collection now offered for sale represents a lifetime of careful collecting in the colorful binding of the time.
The collection of books by L.T. Meade
L.T.Meade