1. Ellen Lawless Ternan, known as Nelly Ternan or Nelly Wharton-Robinson, was an English actress known for her relationship with the older Charles Dickens.
21 Facts About Ellen Ternan
1. 2.
Ellen Ternan was born in Rochester, Kent, which directly adjoins the town of Dickens' childhood, Chatham.
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Ellen Ternan was the third of four children; she had a brother who died in infancy and two sisters named Maria and Frances.
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Ellen Ternan was considered the least theatrically gifted of the three sisters, but she worked extensively in the provinces, particularly after her father died in October 1846 in the Bethnal Green Insane Asylum.
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Ellen Ternan cast her, on the recommendation of his friend, actor and playwright Alfred Wigan, along with her mother and sister Maria, in three performances of The Frozen Deep by Wilkie Collins in Manchester in August 1857.
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In mid-September 1857, Charles Dickens went with Wilkie Collins to Doncaster to see Ellen Ternan perform in The Pet of the Petticoats at the Theatre Royal.
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Ellen Ternan was 18 at the time, only 6 months older than his youngest daughter Katey.
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In two books published in 1935 and 1936, Thomas Wright alleged that they had an affair, stating that he had heard it from Canon Benham, who claimed that Ellen Ternan had confessed all.
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In 2021 Irish author of historical fiction Cora Harrison and in 2022 scholar Brian Ruck both contended Ellen Ternan was Dickens' illegitimate daughter, but has been refuted by scholars of Dickens.
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Ellen Ternan was clever, charming, a force of character, and interested in literature and the theatre.
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Ellen Ternan left the stage in 1860, and was financially supported by Dickens from that point onward.
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Ellen Ternan sometimes travelled with him, which was the case in the event of the Staplehurst rail crash in Kent on 9 June 1865 as they and Ternan's mother were returning from a visit to France.
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Dickens is thought by many scholars and commentators to have based several of his female characters on Ellen Ternan, including Estella in Great Expectations, Bella Wilfer in Our Mutual Friend and Helena Landless in The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
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In 1876, six years after Dickens's death, Ellen Ternan married George Wharton Robinson, an Oxford graduate, who was 12 years her junior and knew nothing of her close association with Dickens.
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Ellen Ternan presented herself as 14 years younger.
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Ellen Ternan's husband died in 1910, and she spent her last years in Southsea with her sister Frances.
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Ellen Ternan died of cancer in Fulham, London on April 25,1914, and is buried in Highland Road Cemetery in Portsmouth, the city of Dickens's birth.
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Ellen Ternan was the subject of a bestselling biography by Claire Tomalin in 1990, which brought the relationship to a broader general audience.
19.
Research by Brian Ruck published in The Dickensian, Winter 2022, introduced the view that Ellen Ternan was Dickens' illegitimate daughter rather than a mistress.
20.
Ellen Ternan is featured in the 2009 novel Drood by Dan Simmons.
21.
Ellen Ternan is played by Felicity Jones and Dickens by Ralph Fiennes.