Frances Minto Elliot

[2] Collins dedicated his 1872 novel, Poor Miss Finch, to her,[3] and much of the content in Marian Holcolmbe's conversations in The Woman in White is said to be based on her.

Despite the fact that she was the innocent party in the divorce, she found herself socially ostracised from the upper-class circles in which she had once moved and travelled to Italy, where she was eventually to spend a large part of her life.

[9] According to the 1896 edition of her book, Roman Gossip, one of the daughters from her first marriage (also named Frances) later married the Italian archaeologist and art historian, Marchese Chigi.

[10] During the protracted divorce proceedings, she worked as a journalist for several London magazines and became friends with Wilkie Collins, who also wrote for Bentley's Miscellany.

In addition to numerous articles in magazines and journals, she wrote the following books: Non-fiction Fiction Elliot was the subject of Wendy Parkins’ 2024 novel The Defiance of Frances Dickinson.