Romance Dell, Ethel M: The Bars of Iron. V1. 26 Feb 2009

[crutledge]

Ethel Dell's married name is recorded as Ethel Mary Savage. She was born in Streatham, a suburb of London. Her father was a clerk in the City of London and she had an older sister and brother. Her family was middle class and lived a comfortable life. Ethel Dell was a very shy, quiet girl and was content to be dominated by her family. She began to write stories while very young and many of them were published in popular magazines. Beneath her shy exterior, she had a passionate heart and most of her stories were stories of passion and love set in India and other British colonial possessions. They were considered to be very racy and her cousins would pull out pencils to try and count up the number of times she used the words: passion, tremble, pant and thrill.
While readers adored Ethel M. Dell's novels, critics hated them with a passion; but she did not care what the critics thought. She considered herself a good storyteller – nothing more and nothing less. Ethel M. Dell continued to write novels for a number of years. She made quite a lot of money, from 20,000 to 30,000 pounds a year, but remained quiet and almost pathologically shy.

She recalled old Mrs. Marshall's dour remarks concerning him;--"brought up by men from his cradle," brought up, moreover, by that terrible old Sir Beverley on the one hand and an irresponsible French valet on the other. She caught herself wishing that she had had the upbringing of him, and smiled again. There was a great deal of sweetness in his nature; of that she was sure, and because of it she found she could forgive his waywardness, reflecting that he had probably been mismanaged from his earliest infancy.

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