Elvina Mary Corbould

Elvina Mary Corbould was born in 1849 in Islington, then a comfortable middle- and upper-middle-class district on the northern edge of London proper.  She was the eldest of the four children of Henry Heath Corbould and his wife Ann; Henry was a member of the Corbould family of Sussex and London which produced an impressive number of artists, including two of Henry's brothers, over at least three generations.  Elvina was sent to St. Mary's school in Bury St. Edmund's, but in the same year that she was recorded there on the 1861 census, her father, a doctor, died at the age of forty, leaving Ann with four children, the youngest less than a year old.  Perhaps as a result, by the time of the next census in 1871, Elvina was recorded as a governess, presumably to at least the youngest of the family's five sons, in the household of Aster R.C. Corbould, a first cousin of her father's and already a noted artist.  Three years later, Elvina published her first books at the age of about twenty-three, The Ladies' Knitting Book and The Ladies' Crochet Book, demurely credited on the title pages to "E.M.C."  These were the first of many instruction books on a variety of needlework subjects, most of which, gratifyingly, ran to multiple printings and editions.

In 1893, in her early forties, she married Mark Anthony Robinson of Brighton, a surgeon. Robinson died in December 1911, but a few months earlier, Elvina had been enumerated on the 1911 census, though noted as "married", living with her mother and unmarried youngest brother (an artist), at no.6 Ruvigny Mansions in Putney (which was apparently Ann's family home), on the banks of the Thames. (It seems likely that Elvina and her husband were living apart because of his illness.) By the 1930s at least, Elvina was living at 24, Queen's Square, Bath, where she died 6 October 1936.

In addition to needlework manuals, Corbould published other didactic works including Side-Lights on Shakspere with Louise Rossi in 1897, Pitman's Studies in Elocution in 1909 ("A guide to the theory and practice of the art of public speaking, reciting, and reading") and Sweet Little Rogues (1876), her only exercise in fiction.

The frontispiece to Sweet Little Rogues. Note the "comforters" worn by all three of the children! (The illustrations are uncredited; it is entirely possible, given the artistic bent of many of the Corboulds, that they were drawn by Elvina herself.)

Works on knitting and needlework

1874

• The ladies' knitting-book (1st series)
  
• The ladies' crochet-book

1876

• The ladies' work-book (possibly this one?)
  
• The ladies' netting-book 

1877

• The teacher's assistant in needle work
• The ladies' crochet book (1st series)
  
• The ladies' crochet book (3rd series)
  

1878

• The ladies' knitting book (2nd series)

1879

• The ladies' crochet book *
• The ladies' knitting book
  
• The ladies' crewel embroidery book
  

1882

• Mother's knitter: containing some patterns of things for little children
  

1884

• Directions for knitting drawers **
  

1887

• The useful knitter 

1890

• The knitter's note book
  

*Possibly a pirated or thoroughly-adapted American edition. 

**Known only from the knitting-books list at Booksandwriters.co.uk.

Sources

"Elvina Mary Corbould" in FamilySearch Family Tree (accessed 12 May 2021).

"Elvina Mary Corbould" at Gutenberg.org (accessed 12 May 2021).

"Elvina Mary Corbould" at the Online Books Page (accessed 12 May 2021).

"Elvina Mary Corbould" at WorldCat (accessed 12 May 2021).

Poulter, George F.C.  The Corbould genealogy. Orig. Ipswich : Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, 1935, available in PDF form via Corbould.com.

"The Knitted Lace Collar Receipt Book"

Mrs. G.J. Baynes's The Knitted Lace Collar Receipt Book (1846) seems to have proved so popular that it went into multiple editions and series with new patterns.  Scans of the fourth edition of 1846 are available free at Archive.org and the Online Books Page, and modern knitted-up examples of a number of its patterns can be found at the book's Ravelry page.  Other modern knitters have worked some of Mrs. Baynes's lace collars, such as the blogger at One More Stitch who discusses her version of Collar no.2 here and here (commenting that the pattern is "clearly written and enjoyable to knit which led me to reflect that in less than ten years [since the publication of The Workwoman's Guide], the art of pattern writing, including the suggestion of needle sizes and materials, had become vastly improved"!) and here.

In addition to the Lace Collar book, Mrs. Baynes also wrote The Album of Fancy Needlework (1847) -- "or, novelties in knitting, netting, and crochet : both useful and ornamental" -- The Berlin Wool Home and Opera Cap Receipt Book (1849), and The Oriental Book of Crochet and Bead Work (1857), which may (also?) have appeared in La Mode Winter Book volume 1 of 1847, possibly a compilation of various needlework books or pamphlets by Eliza Warren, Eléonore Riego de la Branchardière, and others.

Anne (or Ann) Baynes, née Cox (1809-1883), was the wife of bookseller Godfrey John Baynes of Gravesend, Kent, who kept a "circulating library, Berlin wool and fancy depot" (a shop where one purchased "fancy goods," that is, notions and supplies for making decorative items) at 60, Windmill Street, and later at 60-61 High Street in that same town; he published and printed most if not all of his wife's needlework booklets.

Sources

Goulden, R.J. "A biographical dictionary of those engaged in the Kent book trade, 1750-1900, vol.1 A-L" (Croyden : [R.J. Goulden?], 2014), p.64.

"Miss Dewing's Fancy Depot," The Brisbane (Queensland) Courier, 17 December 1900, p.3.