Elizabeth Helme

Elizabeth Helme (née Horrobin; 8 August 1743 – 1 January 1814) was a prolific English novelist, educational writer, and translator active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Life Elizabeth Helme was likely born in County Durham, England, to a family tentatively identified by the name of Horrobin. Her family moved to London, where she met William Helme (c.1747–1822), who became her husband in 1772. They had five children. One of their daughters, Elizabeth Somerville (1774–1840), herself became a novelist. Elizabeth Helme is also known to have worked as a teacher, and her translations included two children's plays by Joachim Heinrich Campe: Cortez (1799) and Pizarro (1800), and much of her writing was aimed for younger readers. Writing Helme published her first, anonymous novel, Louisa; or, The Cottage on the Moor in 1787, and it remained one of her most successful publications Her work first appeared under her own name with The Farmer of Inglewood Forest, published by the popular Minerva Press in 1796.