Mrs. Gordon Smythies

Harriette Maria Smythies (1813–1883), who wrote as Mrs. Gordon Smythies, was an English novelist and poet. Born Harriette Gordon in Margate, she published verse as a young woman and after her marriage to a clergyman turned to fiction, producing a long series of three-volume novels for the circulating libraries from the 1840s to the 1870s. The Breach of Promise, Cousin Geoffrey the Old Bachelor, The Jilt, The Matchmaker, Married for Love and Addie's Husband were among her titles, many reprinted in the United States. Her books deal with courtship, marriage and money in the English middle and upper classes and were widely read in their day.