Dunedin's Missing Literary Link

By Geoff Adams | Posted:

Thorpe Talbot (1850-1923) was one of Dunedin’s earliest known writers and journalists and be came a celebrity. She became famous for “Philiberta” that won the Melbourne Leader newspaper’s novel competition in 1881 and was later published by Ward, Lock (London) for international sale.

Born Frances Ellen Talbot, in Yorkshire, her mother migrated with her to Australia when she was three, and in 1867, aged 15, the girl sailed alone to New Zealand where she toured but soon became resident in Dunedin.

As “Thorpe” Talbot she cut her teeth with short stories and poems initially published by newspapers in Australia and then in New Zealand. She also wrote a gothic melodrama novella “Blue Cap” that was published in 1880 as a book together with Vincent Pyke’s “White Hood”, the pair described as “A Christmas bough with two branches” on the cover.

Talbot’ s lengthy epic poem “Guinevere in the South” (59 seven-line stanzas) was published in newspapers in 1879, a version of Tennyson’s famous “Morte d’Arthur” set in Australia. It has been republished recently as an appendix in “Judge Ward” (2011) by Geoff Adams: a triple biography of Judge Dudley Ward, his eminent first wife, and Thorpe Talbot.

Talbot has references to Judge Ward in several works and appears to have been his mistress before they both married late in their lives. (Her poem about Guinevere could also be influenced by this relationship.)

Talbot also was notable as a travel journalist. She wrote a travel guide of New Zealand as a book and a series of articles for newspapers about her six months’ trip to California, USA. 

MORE ABOUT THORPE TALBOT