Chapman, Mary Francis

by Frances Clarke

Chapman, Mary Francis (1838–84), novelist, was born 28 November 1838 in Dublin, the daughter of Robert Chapman, of Walthamstow, Essex, who in 1838 was landing surveyor and surveyor of warehouses in Dublin port. When he was transferred to London the family moved with him to England, and Mary Francis was educated at Staplehurst, Kent. She was a precocious writer; by the age of fifteen she had completed part of Mary Bertrand, a three-volume novel which appeared in 1860 under the pen-name Francis Meredith. It was followed in 1862 by Lord Bridgenorth's niece, for which she first adopted her most consistent pseudonym, J. Calder Ayrton. Bellasis, or The fortunes of a cavalier, a historical tale on which she collaborated with her father, was published in the Churchman's Family Magazine in 1869. A visit to her brother in Scotland provided her with the inspiration for her first success: A Scotch wooing (1875). A year later she published what has become regarded as her best work, Gerald Marlow's wife, a melodramatic story of marital trials. Her final novel, The gift of the gods (1879), was published under her own name.

Chapman never married and lived most of her life in Kent, where she died 18 February 1884 of cancer after a long illness.