Elizabeth Meeke


Elizabeth Meeke was a prolific English author, and the stepsister of Frances Burney. She wrote around 30 novels published by the Minerva Press during the late eighteenth and early 19th centuries, most under the name of Mrs. Meeke, some under the pseudonym Gabrielli, and a few anonymously. Formerly speculated to be Mary Meeke, the wife of a Staffordshire vicar, "Mrs. Meeke" was conclusively identified as Elizabeth Meeke in an article by Simon Macdonald in 2013. She is believed to have died around October 1826.
Meeke's first published novel was Count St Blanchard in 1795; others include The Abbey of Clugny, The Mysterious Wife, Anecdotes of the Altamont Family, and Which is the Man? Her works include several translations from French, e.g. Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia.
The third edition of Chamber's Cyclopaedia of English Literature gave a disparaging assessment of her work:

Novels