Harriet Ward

She was born at Thorp, Norfolk in 1808 to Colonel and Mrs Francis Skelly Tidy, née Miss Pinder, daughter of the Chief Justice of Barbados.

In 1842 they travelled from Cork to the eastern frontier of the Cape and spent five years in the British colony there, at Fort Peddie and Grahamstown, in the so-called "Ceded Territory".

She began with articles about her father and later contributed reports about war and life in "Kaffirland",[2] a British name for an area of the Cape Colony stretching from Kaffraria to Albany.

[2] Some of the writing she did in 1846 and 1847 formed the basis for the book which came out soon after her arrival in England in 1848: Five years in Kaffirland: with sketches of the late war in that country to the conclusion of peace: written on the spot.

[5] Three years later her novel Jasper Lyle: a tale of Kafirland (sic) was more successful and was described in the Morning Post as "truthful and popular" with a "fidelity and vivacity" in its descriptions of "Kaffir life and scenery", "giving it at the present moment an especial interest".

[2] Some see her as "stridently propagandist"[3] for British imperialism, particularly in her non-fiction writing about colonial South Africa, while others find more complex attitudes, for instance when the eponymous heroine of Helen Charteris is friendly with a Creole girl.