My research projects are united by an interest in how literary data and digital resources can enhance and extend understanding of Australian literature.
- Close relations: Irishness in Australian Literature
- Read all about it: Digital participation in 20th-century Australian newspaper fiction
- Reading at the Interface: Literatures, Cultures, Technologies
- To be continued: Exploring the World of Fiction in Colonial Newspapers
- Resourceful Reading: A New History of the Australian Novel
Katherine Bode 
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Hello Katherine
I have come across your details while researching my great-great grandmother, who wrote under the name of Clementine Montagu. Her name has appeared a number of times in your list on WordPress.com, although you only have a small number of her serialised stories in your excel document.
I would be interested to know if you have any further information about her, or if you can point me in a direction to continue my search. I have found the title of a great number of her stories through the British Newspapers website, but still have two unfulfilled tasks:
Did any of her stories appear in book form, and (I think this may be an impossibility . . .) I’m fairly convinced that she wrote under another assumed name as well, because according to family oral history she had been living off her story writing since around 1863, yet all the stories under the Clementine Montagu name only appear after around 1872. At this time she had married her second husband, who had the middle name of Montagu – hence her pen-name.
Thank you for making your information available on the wonderful web!
Kind regards, Diana
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Hi Diana, I asked my research associate Carol Hetherington if she could help with your query and this is how she replied.
Here’s a summary of what we know.
Our principal source of information for this author was Andrew King ‘INDEX TO LONDON JOURNAL “COMPLETE NOVEL” MONTHLY SUPPLEMENTS 1879-1883’. According to Andrew King, the author is ‘Unidentified, though the Name (which may cover more than one person) was evidently successful in The London Journal if the number of novels attributed to it is anything to go by. King has posted queries about Montagu on a couple of blogs, and requests for information.
King’s index is available for download from:
One of the novels published in The London Journal, ‘A Sinless Crime”, was published in book form, New York : N.L. Munro, [1883] as by Geraldine Fleming. I suspect this was pirated from The London Journal. Geraldine Fleming was a ‘house name’ for another US publisher of popular fiction, Street & Smith, and possibly a pseudonym for Coryell, John Russell, 1851-1924.
Another source claims that Clementine Montagu is a pseudonym for Watts Phillips: ‘Watts Phillips was a writer for the London Journal, where, under the names Fairfax Balfour, he wrote “Ida Lee; or, The Child of the Wreck” and as Clementine Montagu, “For A Woman’s Sake.”’
Hope this information helps your search.
Best wishes,
Katherine
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