Emily A. Patmore

Emily Augusta Patmore (1824–1862), born Andrews, was the daughter of a Congregational minister and the first wife of the poet Coventry Patmore, who made her the model for The Angel in the House. She wrote for children and for domestic servants, publishing The Servant's Behaviour Book in 1859 under the pen name Mrs. Motherly, as well as nursery tales and verses. Millais painted her portrait. She bore six children and died of tuberculosis at thirty-eight, and her husband's grief at her death produced the poems of The Unknown Eros. Her small manual of manners survives as an unusually direct record of a Victorian household seen from below stairs.