The prolific religious penny-novelist Grace Pettman was born in Plymouth, spent her life in the South West, and lived out the final decade of her life in Penzance, dying in Marazion.
She contributed widely to Christian literature, magazines and journals such as The Girls Own Paper, and the Railway Mission Magazine from the age of 18 on, as well as turning out more than 150 novelettes under a variety of pseudonyms.
Initially writing under an assumed name was necessary, as her Plymouth Brethren family would not countenance a writing woman. Nevertheless, her literary output was always wholesome, dutiful, and religious, published by ‘Horner’s Penny Stories for the People’ and Nicholson’s. Later, she wrote in order to live and to support her sickly husband, and after his death, her daughter. She was paid poorly for her literary output though doggedly determined to make the best of it.
The Jamieson Library, from which the Hypatia Collections have grown, was fortunate some years ago to acquire a large collection made by her daughter of her writings and personal papers.
Her 1908 travel diaries of her journey in Norway and her 1931 writing on her cruise up the St. Lawrence river in North America for make fascinating reading. Her literature as a whole provides us with a wonderful diary of a young and restricted West Country girl emerging into the global working world of the 20th century. The Morrab Library now holds a large archive, including most of her novels under her own name and pseuddonyms, novelettes in penny paper format, short stories in anthologies, and her personal diaries of travels to Norway, Sweden, and elsewhere. Her daughter, Muriel Pettman Pout presented these to the Trust, along with various papers relating to family interests and her own writings. Her papers are held at the University of Kent.
Works in our collections
