Eliza Parsons was an English author best known for having penned two of the seven Northanger Horrid Novels. Parsons is presumed, based on a baptismal certificate, to have been born in 1739. Her father, John Phelp, was a successful wine merchant and used his wealth to provide his only daughter with a better education than many of her contemporaries. She married James Parsons at age 21 and had eight children. The decline in James Parsons's health and subsequent death, as well as the death of all three of her sons, led Eliza Parsons to seek means to support her remaining children and herself. She began writing, and over the course of the next seventeen years wrote nineteen novels and one play. Though prodigious, Parsons often struggled with money until her death in 1811. The Castle of Wolfenbach is her most famous work.
