Elizabeth Margaret Jane Humphreys née Gollan (14 June 1850 – 1 January 1938) was a Scottish novelist from Inverness-shire who wrote 120 books, plays and essays, and founded the Writers’ Club for Women.

[2] Her father travelled extensively, visiting India and Australia, and became a landowner in Scotland following his inheriting the family home at Gollanfield.

[2] This unhappy marriage later provided Eliza with material for four novels Saba Macdonald (1906) The Grandmothers (1927), The Wand’ring Darling (1928) and Jean and Jeanette (1929).

The dedication in the first edition of Saba Macdonald reads: To "THE EMANACIPATED WOMAN" who owes her present freedom of mind, morals, and pastimes, to such repression and tyranny as formed the discipline of youth in days such as this book commemorates.

[1] Gollan's widespread recognition grew as a popular writer with Dame Durden in 1883 while it was Peg the Rake (1894) that earned her real commercial success, having sold 160,000 copies.

[1] In the preface, her friend Sir Philip Gibbs wrote: 'Somehow I think of “Rita”'s readers as lying on deck-chairs in pre-war summers, as tourists in Venice and other pleasant places where well-to-do English people used to take their holidays.

[1] A Man of no Importance is set in Salwych, which "Rita" based strongly on Droitwich Spa in Worcestershire, after visiting the town for treatment at its brine baths, in 1906.