Ellen Davitt

{{Short description|English-born Australian writer}} {{Use dmy dates|date=July 2019}} {{Infobox writer  | name = Ellen Davitt | birth_name = | birth_date = 1812 | birth_place = Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire | death_date = 6 January 1879 | death_place = Fitzroy, Victoria | occupation = | language = English | nationality = Australian | ethnicity = | citizenship = | education = | alma_mater = | notableworks = ''Force and Fraud : A Tale of the Bush'' | awards = | years_active = }}

'''Ellen Davitt''' (1812-1879) was an English-born Australian writer.

==Biography== Marie Antoinette Hélène Léontine (Ellen) Heseltine was born in Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire in 1812.

She married Arthur Davitt, an educationalist, in Jersey in 1845. The couple arrived in Australia on 31 July 1854 with the aim of opening a new Model School.<ref>[https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/davitt-arthur-3380 Australian Dictionary of Biography - Arthur Davitt]</ref> However, internal disagreements and a financial recession resulted in the discharge of the Davitts in 1859. The husband contracted tuberculosis and died in 1860. Davitt continued to teach and also began writing after his death.<ref name=oxford>''The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature'', 2nd edition, p221</ref> Davitt was a sister-in-law of English writer Anthony Trollope, but appears to have had little contact with him.<ref name=oxford />

Although some of her early work has been lost she is now credited with having written the first Australian murder mystery with her novel ''Force and Fraud : A Tale of the Bush'' in 1865.<ref name=oxford /> Davitt began teaching again in 1874 but she died in extreme poverty in Fitzroy, in 1879.<ref name=oxford />

==Legacy== Australia's crime writing award for women, the Davitt Award, is named in her honour.

== Selected works == * ''Force and Fraud : A Tale of the Bush'' (1865)<ref>{{Citation | author1=Davitt, Ellen | title=Force and Fraud : A Tale of the Bush | publication-date=2015 | publisher=Clan Destine Press | isbn=978-0-9924925-8-8}}</ref> * ''Uncle Vincent : Or, Love and Hatred'' (1866)

==References== {{reflist}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Davitt, Ellen}} Category:1812 births Category:1879 deaths Category:19th-century Australian novelists Category:19th-century Australian women writers Category:Australian women novelists Category:English emigrants to colonial Australia Category:Writers from Kingston upon Hull Category:People from Fitzroy, Victoria