Menella Bute Smedley (1820–1877)

Menella Bute Smedley may have been born in Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire, England. Other sources say London. She was a daughter of Edward Smedley, a clergyman and writer, and his wife Mary Hume Smedley. Due to ill-health, she spent several years in childhood living in the seaside town of Tenby in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Charles L. Dodgson, who wrote as Lewis Carroll, was a relative, and Menella is believed to have inspired some of his works with her own. She received a good education at home, especially in the classics. She became a poet, novelist, and translator. At age 30, using the pseudonym "S.M.," she published her first short novel in Sharpe's London Magazine, and then in book form as The Maiden Aunt. She translated the old German ballad, "The Shepherd of the Giant Mountains" into English blank verse in 1846. She published thee collections of poetry: The Story of Queen Isabel, and Other Verses (1863), Poems (1868), and Child-nature (1869). Some of the poems were written with her younger sister, Elizabeth Anna Hart, also a poet and novelist. Menella also contributed many articles to periodicals such as Good Words and The Contemporary Review. She was active in organizations dedicated to helping poor and orphan children in London. She never married and lived for many years in Regent's Park with her cousin Francis Edward Smedley, also a novelist, and acted as his housekeeper and secretary.