Mary Meeke

Who was Mary Meeke?

Mary Meeke was a prolific English author. She wrote around 30 novels published by the Minerva Press during the early 19th century, and is believed to have died in October 1816.

She sometimes used the pseudonym Gabrielli, and probably married a clergyman and poet, the Reverend Francis Meeke. Her first published novel was Count St Blanchard in 1795; others include The Abbey of Cluny, The Mysterious Wife, Anecdotes of the Altamont Family, and Which is the Man?. Her works include several translations from French, e.g. Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia.

The third edition of Chamber's Cyclopaedia of English Literature gave a disparaging assessment of her work:

"Our public schools," Mary Meeke said in her time, "are mere hot-beds for the encouragement of vice and dissipation, which flourish in still greater perfection at college; and as for the grand tour, "why, half those who undertake it return greater fools than they set out".