Catherine Cuthbertson (1775–1842)

The details of Catherine or Kitty Cuthbertson's life are not fully known, although it appears that she was born in Ireland, the daughter of Captain Bennet Cuthbertson of the 5th Regiment of the British Army, and his wife Catherine Bell. Catherine and two of her sisters moved to London at some time before 1803 to become professional writers. She became a widely-read and highly popular Gothic novelist in the tradition of Ann Radcliffe. Her first book, Romance of the Pyrenees, was printed in book form in 1803. However, just weeks after the novel first went on sale, and after only a few copies of it had been sold, the bulk of the print run was destroyed by a fire at the warehouse. Robinson, the publisher, decided to serialize the novel in their other property, the Lady's Magazine, beginning in February 1804. As a result, The Romance of the Pyrenees reached a new and possibly bigger audience than it would have done in volume form alone. It became the longest-running serial magazine fiction in the long 18th century, apart from Richardson's Pamela. In the following years, the Lady's Magazine published extracts from some of Catherine's other novels, which included Forest of Montalbano (1810), Adelaide; or The Countercharm (1813), Rosabella, or A Mother's Marriage (1817), The Hut and the Castle: a Romance (1823), and Sir Ethelbert; or the Dissolution of Monasteries (1830). Her novels were also serialized in the USA well into the 19th century.