Friends of the Dickns-l,

     We have been sitting on two sources of information about Florence 
Marryat  (1838-99):
Google (photograph included) and John Sutherland's *Victorian Fiction* 
(1989).   The latter is
an astonishing piece of work,  which synopsises 554 Victorian novels and 
includes entries on 878
individual authors.

     Florence Marryat  had eight children by a T. Ross Church, a soldier 
serving in India.  In 1879 she
divorced Church to marry Captain Francis Lean, and then wrote "some 
ninety works of fiction."  She
was a formidable woman living as part of a productive novel writing 
family whose father (Captain Frederick)
wrote endless fictions and three of  whose sisters were also novelists. 
   She expected fellow writer Dickens
to be helpful, to help her improve a manuscript.  After all. he was a 
friend of her prolific, successful father.

     The recently found letter show Dickens  a bit put our by her 
demands, but subsequent letters show
him still cordial to her.

Patrick McCarthy
Editor, Dickns-l