Eleanor Collins

**Eleanor Collins, née Millingham** (1870, Oxford) is a British author, socialite and poet. She is known for her romantic, fantastical novels and poems.

## Biography

Eleanor was born to French immigrants Christophe and Marie Millingham in 1870. She was the third of eight children and the first to share her parents' new, anglicised name. Her father was a shoemaker and her mother a laundress. Eleanor grew up in a two-room cottage in Oxford and said that her home situation inspired her novels and poems

*"With so many children we couldnt all stay indoors all day. My brothers and sisters and I would play outside to not disturb our parents, and in the forests and fields I imagined fairies taking me away some place else."*

While her parents were fairly poor, none of the children were illiterate. Marie Millingham (or Millingue in French) had grown up as an orphan in a French monastery and had learned to read from the nuns. Christopher would take his children to a local bookstore in Oxford and look through the books. Knowing their financial situation, the shopkeeper would lend books to them. While Eleanor choose to evade her childhood in her works and write of fantastical worlds, her sister Jane Millingham (1875) and brother Edward Millingham (1881) did write of their poverty.

At Oxford University, she started working as a maid, seeing it as a better option than joining her mother in the laundry business. She was usually working for French exchange students, as she was fluent in French and English. Through her French employer, she met his friend Adam Collins, who was one year her junior.

Of their first encounter in 1891, she said: *"He didn't strike me as interesting at all. He had a rather large forehead, bad posture and dressed beneath his status. Besides, I always found English men boring and prejudged them, because I was convinced of the superiority of the French. But Adam was witty, confident, kind and eloquent. We didn't speak at all the first year, but he wanted to speak to me. He was very interested in this bilingual maid.*

Through Adam, she also met Alexander Collins (1866), his elder brother who worked for a publishing agency. They were interested in the works she wrote in whatever spare time she could get. In 1893 her book *An old maid's tales* was published. The book, about a maid at a university telling fairytales, was so popular Eleanor quit as a maid. It was around this time that Adam proposed to Eleanor, who refused to give up her new independance.

Her sudden rise as an author caused a rift between Eleanor and her parents, as she now made her own money and refused to send any more money home to take care of her younger siblings. At 23 she felt her maturity was due. She published five more novels in four years and eventually was able to afford a townhouse. There, she was often joined by her sisters Sandrine (1867) and Jane (1875).

In 1898, she visited Adam Collins on his holiday in India, where he was now engaged to Theresa Peacock. Ms Peacock preferred the company of Alexander Collins however and broke off the engagement to Adam to marry his brother. Eleanor proposed to Adam and they married on their way back at the British Ambassy in Paris, France. Together, they had four children:

* Susanna Eleanor Marie Collins (1899)
* Ralph Adam Christopher Collins (1901)
* Katherine Jane Isabelle Collins (1904)
* Alexandra Marianne Louise Collins (1905)