Eliza Parsons

Eliza Parsons (née Phelp) (1739 – 5 February 1811) was an English Gothic novelist, best known for The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) and The Mysterious Warning (1796).

About 1778–1779, the family moved to a suburb in London, when Parsons's turpentine business saw a decline as an indirect result of the American War of Independence.

[5] Mr Parsons invested his remaining money in his dwindling turpentine trade,[6] and for about three years, the family's standard of living returned to the pre-American Revolution level.

Several months before the warehouse fire, the Parsons's eldest son had died in Jamaica, immediately after his promotion to captain of the Royal Marines.

Domestic bereavement coupled with the reverses in his business fortunes compounded with deteriorating health, and he suffered a paralysing stroke.

The Castle of Wolfenbach portrays this idea, along with belief in a strong patriarchal family and respect for the middle class rather than aristocracy.

[8] Two of Parsons's novels, The Castle of Wolfenbach and The Mysterious Warning (1796), feature among the seven horrid romances that Catherine Morland recommends to Isabella Thorpe in Chapter 6 of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.