Beth Ellis

The daughter of a prominent English solicitor, Ellis was born in the northern town of Wigan, near Manchester, in 1874.

In 1899 she published An English girl's first impressions of Burmah, a humorous account of a recent six-month stay in what is today Myanmar, then part of British India.

Though she married Godfrey Baker in 1908, Ellis continued to publish under her maiden name until her death in childbirth in Berkhamsted on 2 August 1913.

There is a swing and a cheerfulness in her writing which are particularly attractive; she has an accurate knowledge of her periods; and her characters are very decidedly not the inhuman puppets of the average of historical fiction.

Selections of Ellis's work have also appeared in the following anthologies: The travel book An English Girl's First Impressions of Burmah was translated into French under the title Premières impressions d'une jeune Anglaise en Birmanie, complete with notes, a biography of Beth Ellis and a glossary.