Born: 4 December 1804, United Kingdom
Died: 26 November 1862
Country most active: International
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from the Dictionary of National Biography, originally published between 1885 and 1900, by Smith, Elder & Co. It was written by Elizabeth Lee.
PARDOE, JULIA (1806–1862), author, second daughter of Major Thomas Pardoe, was born at Beverley, Yorkshire, in 1806. Her father, whose family was said to be of Spanish extraction, belonged to the royal wagon train, and served with distinction in the Peninsular campaign and at Waterloo. Miss Pardoe commenced author at a very early age. In her fourteenth year she published a volume of poems which went into a second edition. Fear of consumption necessitated a journey abroad, and the first of Miss Pardoe’s books to obtain notice was ‘Traits and Traditions of Portugal,’ published in 1833, and dedicated to the Princess Augusta, who took a warm interest in the writer. The book was the outcome of personal observation during a fifteen months’ residence abroad. In 1835 Miss Pardoe accompanied her father to Constantinople, and since Lady Mary Wortley Montagu [q. v.] probably no woman has acquired so intimate a knowledge of Turkey. In 1837 she published ‘The City of the Sultan and Domestic Manners of the Turks,’ in two volumes. The book was very successful, and was reprinted in three volumes in 1838, 1845, and 1854. About 1842, when suffering from overwork, she retired from London, and resided with her parents at Perry Street, near Gravesend, and afterwards at Northfleet, Kent. She was granted a civil list pension in January 1860, ‘in consideration of thirty years’ toil in the field of literature, by which she has contributed both to cultivate the public taste and to support a number of helpless relations’ (Colles, Literature and the Pension List, p. 39). She died on 26 Nov. 1862, at Upper Montagu Street, London.
Miss Pardoe was a warm-hearted woman, singularly bright and animated; a capital raconteuse, and, notwithstanding her literary talents, learned in the domestic arts. Hall (Book of Memories, p. 376) describes her in 1826 as ‘a fairy-footed, fair-haired, laughing, sunny girl.’ He declares that she would never admit her age to have passed that of youth, and strove in 1856 to be as vivacious as she was at eighteen. Leigh Hunt mentions her among the women authors, in the ‘Feast of the Violets,’ as ‘Pardoe all spirits.’ Later on, when Apollo danced with the learned ladies, ‘To Pardoe he showed Spain’s impassioned velocity.’ Her portrait, drawn by J. Lilley in 1849, and engraved by Samuel Freeman, forms the frontispiece of the second edition of the ‘Court and Reign of Francis I.’
Besides numerous successful novels, of which the first, ‘Lord Morcar of Hereward,’ appeared in 1829, in four volumes (2nd edit. 1837), Miss Pardoe published several historical works, chiefly pictures of French history, condensed from the memoir-writers. ‘Louis XIV and the Court of France in the Seventeenth Century,’ in three volumes, came out in 1847 (a third edition was published in 1849, and it was reprinted in 1886). ‘The Court and Reign of Francis I,’ published in two volumes in 1849, was reprinted in three volumes in 1887, with a brief memoir of the author. ‘The Life and Memoirs of Marie de Medici, Queen and Regent of France,’ published in 1852, in three volumes, was reprinted in 1890. These works, written, like all the rest, in a pleasant and graceful style, attracted a large share of notice, and, as popular history, may still be read with pleasure. Many of her books were reprinted in the United States, but, according to Mrs. Hale (Woman’s Record, p. 765), Miss Pardoe was not a favourite there.
Her other works are:
‘Speculation,’ 3 vols. 1834.
‘The Mardens and the Daventrys,’ 3 vols. 1835.
‘The River and the Desert; or Recollections of the Rhine and the Chartreuse,’ 2 vols. 1838.
‘The Romance of the Harem,’ 2 vols. 1839, 1857.
‘The Beauties of the Bosphorus,’ 1839. This volume was reprinted in 1854 and 1874, under the title of ‘Picturesque Europe.’
‘The City of the Magyar; or Hungary and its Institutions,’ 3 vols. 1840.
‘The Hungarian Castle,’ 3 vols. 1842.
‘Confessions of a Pretty Woman,’ 3 vols. 1846, 1847, 1860.
‘The Jealous Wife,’ 3 vols. 1847, 1855, 1857, 1858.
‘The Rival Beauties,’ 3 vols. 1848 (second edit.), 1861.
‘Flies in Amber,’ 3 vols. 1850.
. ‘Reginald Lyle,’ 3 vols. 1854, 1857.
. ‘Lady Arabella; or the Adventures of a Doll,’ 1856.
‘Abroad and at Home: Tales Here and There,’ 1857.
‘Pilgrimages in Paris,’ 1857.
‘The Poor Relation: a Novel,’ 3 vols. 1858.
‘Episodes of French History during the Consulate and the First Empire,’ 2 vols. 1859.
‘A Life-Struggle,’ 2 vols. 1859.
‘The Rich Relation,’ 1862.
In addition, Miss Pardoe translated ‘La Peste’ (1834), an Italian poem by Sorelli; edited the ‘Memoirs of the Queens of Spain’ (1850), and contributed an introduction to ‘The Thousand and One Days,’ a companion to ‘The Arabian Nights,’ in 1857.
The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.
PARDOE, JULIA, Is the daughter of a field-officer in the British army, whose family is of Spanish extraction. She was born at Beverley, in Yorkshire, and early manifested great indications of genius, having at the age of thirteen produced a volume of poems, and a few years later an historical novel of the time of William the Conqueror, called “Lord Morcar of Hereward.” A warmer climate being recommended, on account of certain consumptive symptoms which it was thought she manifested. Miss Pardoe went to Portugal, where she spent about fifteen months, contributing during that time to various periodicals. The fruits of her observations on that country were, on her return to England, published in two volumes, entitled “Traits and Traditions of Portugal.” The work was dedicated, by express desire, to H.R.H. the Princess Augusta, who manifested a warm interest in the fortunes of the young authoress; it quickly went through two editions, and was followed shortly after by two novels—”Speculation” and “The Mardens and the Daventrys.” These established her reputation as a novelist. But she did not at the time pursue this opening to literary fame and fortune. In 1835, during the fearful visitation of the cholera at Constantinople, we find Miss Pardoe there, and in the following year is published her account of what she sees and hears on the shores of the Bosphorus, in that popular book “The City of the Sultan.” The vivid sketches of oriental life of which this book consists, rendered it extremely fascinating to general readers; and the interest which it created, heightened by the knowledge that its author had, at some risk to herself, penetrated behind the veil which had hitherto hidden many of the “peculiar institutions” of the Moslem from unbelieving eyes. Its popularity induced the writer to publish in 1838 a series of letters, descriptive of the earlier part of her journey to the East, under the title of “The River and the Desert, or Recollections of the Rhine and the Chartreuse;” after which she again took up the thread of her eastern recollections, and produced a series of short tales, connected by a slight vein of continuous narrative, to which she gave the title of “The Romance of the Harem;” and not having yet exhausted her memories of the sunny clime, she furnished the letter-press to a beautifully-illustrated work called “The Beauties of the Bosphorus.”
Miss Pardoe next turned her attention to Hungary, which country she visited for the express purpose of obtaining materials for a useful and veracious, rather than an amusing book. In “The City of the Magyar, or Hungary and its Institutions,” issued in 1840, it was acknowledged that she had, without the sacrifice of utility or truth, given to the world a book which possessed all the charm and excitement of a romance. Her fertile imagination and graphic powers of description were next exhibited in “The Hungarian Castle,” a novel; and after this, in 1847, the first of her great historical works—”Louis the Fourteenth, or the Court of the Seventeenth Century,” in which, with all the lively spirit of a French biography, we have a well-defined picture of an historical epoch. As a relief to these graver studies, there then followed two novels—”The Confessions of a Pretty Woman” and “The Rival Beauties,” after which came two more historical works—”The Life of Francis the First” and “The Life of Marie de Medicis,” both works of acknowledged excellence. To this long catalogue may be added a story called “Reginald Lyle,” first published in a periodical; “Flies in Amber,” a series of short tales; “The Jealous Wife,” a novel; and a book for young people; besides numerous contributions to magazines and reviews. When we consider the amount of research necessary for the production of some of these works, and that much of the author’s time has been spent in travel, we are amazed at their number and variety of character. By her more elaborate historical works Miss Pardoe has earned for herself a lasting reputation, which is enhanced by the brilliant play of imagination which the lighter productions of her genius emits.