Elizabeth Margaret Jane (Eliza) Humphreys n. Gollan (14 June 1850 to 1 January 1938) was a Scottish novelist from Inverness-shire who wrote 120 books, plays and essays, and founded the Writers’ Club for Women. Early life and education Eliza Gollan's mother was Jane Plumb, daughter of the manager of the Bank of Bengal. Her father, John Gilbert Gollan, had been in business in India and became a landowner in Scotland following his inheriting the family home at Gollanfield, Inverness-shire. This necessitated the family to move from India to Scotland to take ownership. Eliza Gollan was born on 14 June 1850 on the family estate as the second of three children. The family then moved to Sydney, Australia where her father had business interests and she was raised and home educated there. The business venture turned out disappointingly however and the family returned to London when Gollan turned 14 years old. Writing career Under the penname 'Rita', Gollan produced a remarkable 120 books, plays and essays from 1877 onwards when she was still in her twenties. These started as 'light', 'daring' works of popular fiction, often featuring aristocratic characters in fashionable foreign settings. Gollan herself was an admirer of the works of Ouida but she was more often compared as a rival with her contemporary, the bestselling English novelist, Marie Corelli. Gollan's widespread recognition grew as a popular writer with Dame Durden in 1883 while it was Peg the Rake (1894) that earned her real commercial success, having sold 160,000 copies. In 1902, having achieved professional success, she founded the Writers' Club for Women to help support other women wanting to achieve the same. Her later work became infused with her own opinions and beliefs and works such as A Husband of No Importance (1894) and Souls (1903) were vehicles for attacking an emerging trend in novels at the time, the 'New Woman' movement, fearing that women were 'aping men' and disapproving of what might be later termed polemical feminism. A Husband of No Importance (1894) was also more than a passing nod to Oscar Wilde's play A Woman of No Importance, which had opened in 1893. She was also critical of 'Church Christianity' and took up theosophy having met Madame Blavatsky. Works such as Calvary (1909) addressed what she saw as the problems of organised religion. Gollan maintained that Calvary meant more to her than any other book that she