A character in Catherine Gore's Women as They Are (1830) says, "We have perhaps had more than enough of fashionable novels, but as the amber which serves to preserve the ephemeral modes and caprices of the passing day, they have their value." If this statement is true, then Gore's work is a veritable museum, preserving life as it existed in fashionable London during the regency and reign of George IV (1811-1830). In an age of prolific writers, her oeuvre (more than sixty volumes of fiction, drama, and verse as well as travel books and a garden manual) was among the most prodigious. She was also an accomplished composer and etcher.

Despite the enormous popularity of Gore's novels, little is known about her background. Catherine Grace Frances Moody is often said to have been born in 1799 in the small town of East Retford, Nottinghamshire. Papers left by her, however, indicate...