Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Broughton, Rhoda
BROUGHTON, RHODA (1840-1920), novelist, was born near Denbigh 29 November 1840. She was the daughter of the Rev. Delves Broughton, a younger son of an old Staffordshire family, by his wife, Jane, daughter of George Bennett, Q.C., of Dublin. When Rhoda was still a child her father was presented to the living of Broughton, Staffordshire, where the Elizabethan manor-house, which was one of the family seats, was placed at his disposal. Here Rhoda, who was the youngest of a family of three daughters and one son, passed her girlhood. The old house which forms the background of her first story was drawn from Broughton Hall, and her life in the Staffordshire village furnished her with material for some of the best scenes in her novels. Under the guidance of her father, a man of wide reading, she acquired the intimate knowledge of English poetry which makes itself apparent throughout her work.
Mr. Broughton died in 1863, his wife having predeceased him, and Rhoda made her home, first with her two sisters at Surbiton, and afterwards with her sister Eleanor, who married Mr. William Charles Newcome, of Upper Eyarth, near Ruthin, Denbighshire, in 1864.
In 1867 she began her literary career with the publication of two novels, Cometh Up as a Flower and Not Wisely but too Well. The first of these books captivated the reading public with the freshness of its dialogue and the frank abandonment of its characters to emotions which the novels of the period usually treated with greater discretion. Its successor struck the same note more emphatically, and these early works gave Miss Broughton a reputation for audacity which she lost in later years when literary fashions had overtaken her and passed her by.
From this time she published on an average a novel every two years. Among the best known are: Good-bye, Sweetheart (1872), Nancy (1873), Joan (1876), Belinda (1883), Doctor Cupid (1886), Foes-in-law (1900), and A Waif's Progress (1905). Her private life was uneventful. In 1878 she took a house at Oxford with Mrs. Newcome, then a widow. The two sisters made for themselves a distinguished position in Oxford society, and Rhoda’s vitality, sincerity, and pungent wit gained her the friendship of some of the most notable people of her day. Her freedom of speech was combined with a marked conventionality of outlook; and her deep regard for the manners and breeding of the class into which she was born made her a keen and amusing critic of modern fashions.
In 1890 the sisters moved to Richmond. Mrs. Newcome died there in 1894, and after a few years Miss Broughton joined a cousin at Headington Hill, near Oxford, where, but for occasional visits to London, she lived till her death on 5 June 1920.
As a novelist Rhoda Broughton appealed more to the general reader than to the critic. She did not take the art of fiction seriously, and her style was somewhat slipshod. Her gifts were, however, genuine and they developed with exercise. Her later novels, less sentimental in theme than those of her youth, contain some excellent light comedy, and her books are an entertaining record of country house life during the latter half of the nineteenth century.
[The Times, 7 June 1920; Fortnightly Review, vol. cviii, pp. 262-78; private information.]