The family lived at 106 High Street, Guildford, and the household also included six young nephews and nieces, taken in after they were orphaned in a cholera epidemic in London.

The 1851 census listed Ellis as the milliner, her older sister Sarah the schoolmistress, and Emily and Elizabeth as governesses.

Ellis remembered the "home in the woods", in her book calling it the "large rambling antiquated place...suggestive of ghosts and goblins".

Whilst in England, her brother-in-law, James Ellis, encouraged her to express her opinions by writing a pamphlet on the unfair treatment of women.

[1] After returning she attended the non-denominational church services of Reverend Samuel Edger and he encouraged her writing and self-education.

The City Council of Auckland refused her petition on the grounds that "the subject is one which it is undesirable to explain in all its disgusting details to the public".

It was not widely read as her son, businessman John William Ellis, considered his late father to be an occasional drinker,[2] rather than a drunkard, and burnt all the copies of the novel he could find.