Eliza Lynn Linton (10 February 1822 – 14 July 1898) was the first female salaried journalist in Britain and the author of over 20 novels. Despite her path-breaking role as an independent woman, many of her essays took a strong anti-feminist slant. Life Linton was born in Keswick, Cumbria, England, the youngest of the twelve children of the Rev. James Lynn, vicar of Crosthwaite, and his wife Charlotte, who was the daughter of a bishop of Carlisle. The death of her mother when Eliza was five months old meant a chaotic upbringing, in which she was largely self-educated, but in 1845 she left home to earn her living as a writer in London. After moving to Paris, she married W. J. Linton in 1858, an eminent wood-engraver, who was also a poet of note, a writer on his craft, and a Chartist agitator. She moved into his ramshackle house, Brantwood, in the Lake District, with his seven children from an earlier marriage, and wrote there a novel set locally: Lizzie Lorton of Greyrigg. The couple also lived at Gang Moor on the edge of Hampstead Heath for several years. In 1867 they separated amicably, her husband going to America and Eliza going back to life as a London writer. Linton returned briefly to her childhood home in Cumbria in 1889, to feel "half in a dream here. It is Keswick and yet not Keswick, as I am Eliza Lynn and yet not Eliza Lynn." She usually lived in London until about three years before her death, when she retired to Brougham House, Malvern. She died at Queen Anne's Mansions, London, on 14 July 1898. Her ashes were scattered in Crosthwaite churchyard. Career Linton arrived in London in 1845 as a protégée of the novelist William Harrison Ainsworth and the poet Walter Savage Landor. At one time she was promoted by Theodosia Monson, who was a champion of women's rights. In 1846 she produced her first novel, Azeth, the Egyptian, which was followed by Amymone (1848) and Realities (1851). Neither had great success. Meanwhile she began working as a journalist and became acquainted with George Eliot. Linton joined the staff of the Morning Chronicle in 1849, a position said to have made her the first woman to be paid a salary as a journalist. She left the paper in 1851 over a disagreement. During her time in Paris, Linton was a