to write, professionalism in a woman of fashion was not good form. The distant memory of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and the more recent memory of Lady Caroline Lamb, had brought about a fierce reaction towards reticence and retirement among ladies in society. In the autumn of 1834, Miss Eden was living with her brother at Ham Cottage, very anxious for a little money to spare to the furnishing of a country cottage of her own.
"I wish," she wrote to Mrs. Lister, "I could write like Mrs. Hannah More, and have money enough to build myself a Barley Wood." She was, moreover, stimulated to emulation by the publication of Ann Grey, which at the time she believed was the anonymous work of her friend. The Semi-attached Couple resulted, but remained for near thirty years in a drawer before her friends persuaded her to revise and give it to the world.
Miss Eden's first novel. The Semi-detached House, was published in 1859, under the editorship of Lady Theresa Lewis (the Mrs. Lister above mentioned who inspired and encouraged the composition of the Semi-attached Couple). Bentley, the publisher, offered her £250 for the book, but she successfully stood out for £300. It was well reviewed in the Globe, but not noticed in The Times, which did not then "stoop to single-volume novels." Her friends, of course, were delighted with it; Lord Lansdowne and Locock wrote enthusiastically, and Sidney Herbert called in person to report the appreciation of Pall Mall. Its success surprised and pleased her, and doubtless encouraged her to revise and complete the long-neglected Semi-attached, which duly appeared in the following year. It was received with equal warmth, and is on the whole the more attractive of the two novels. In the last of Miss Eden's published letters she refers to the quantity of appreciations which she possessed, notably "a grand one from Lord Houghton in praise of my pure and facile English."
