Frances Ellen Colenso (1849 - 1887)

Born 30 May 1849 in Fornett St Mary, Norfolk, England

Ancestors

Died 28 Apr 1887 at age 37 in Ventnor, Isle of Wight, Hampshire, England

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Biography

Frances was born in 1849. She was the daughter of John Colenso and Sarah Bunyon.

With her sisters, she was a pupil at Winnington Hall, Cheshire, during the early 1860s, when Bishop Colenso—then at the centre of theological controversy—returned with his family to Britain. She also attended Winnington Hall (c.1862–1864) and subsequently studied at the Slade School of Art in London. She enjoyed the friendship of Georgiana Burne-Jones, wife of the painter. Although an aspiring artist, she was also the author of works of fiction and literary sketches. Her best-known works, however, were My Chief and I (published in 1880, but—apart from a sequel—written earlier) and the History of the Zulu Wars (1880), which were intended to support her father's criticism of official policy and to defend the reputation of Colonel Anthony Durnford, the man whom she could not marry because he was already caught in an unhappy marriage. Durnford was blamed by Natal colonists for the death of colonial volunteers in the skirmish at the Bushman's River pass in 1873; later, Chelmsford made him the scapegoat for the British disaster at Isandlwana.

Frances Ellen worked with her father and then sister Harriot to produce the massive and ill-digested two volumes of The Ruin of Zululand (1884–5), and supervising the family collaboration with ‘Sir’ George Cox over the Life of Bishop Colenso (1888–9). Neither work was well received. After suffering for several years from consumption, Frances Ellen died on 28 April 1887 in lodgings at Ventnor in the Isle of Wight, perhaps of a heart attack.

Sources

• Christening & death records
• https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-46549#odnb-9780198614128-e-46549