Ellen Ternan is sometimes confused with her near contemporary, the Shakespearean actress Ellen Terry

Ellen Terry

Dame Ellen Terry, GBE was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Among the members of her famous family is her great nephew, John Gielgud....

, whose career was more distinguished, but who did not have an affair with Dickens.

Ellen Lawless Ternan (3 March 1839 – 25 April 1914), also known as Nelly Ternan or Nelly Robinson, was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 actress who is mainly known as the woman for whom Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

 separated from his wife Catherine

Catherine Dickens

Catherine 'Kate' Thomson Dickens was the wife of English novelist Charles Dickens, with whom he fathered 10 children.-Marriage:...

.

Life

Ellen Lawless Ternan was born in Rochester, Kent. She was the third of four children, including a brother who died in infancy and a sister called Frances (later the second wife of Thomas Adolphus Trollope

Thomas Adolphus Trollope

Thomas Adolphus Trollope was born in Bloomsbury, London on 29 April 1810, the eldest son of Thomas Anthony & Frances Trollope . He was educated at Harrow School and Winchester College...

, the brother of Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire...

), born to her parents who were both actors of some distinction. Ternan made her stage debut in Sheffield

Sheffield

Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...

 at the age of three, and she and her two sisters were presented as "infant phenomena". Ternan was considered the least gifted of the three sisters, but she worked extensively in the provinces and in 1857 she was spotted by Dickens performing at London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

's Haymarket Theatre

Haymarket Theatre

The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...

. He cast her, along with her mother and one of her sisters, in a performance of The Frozen Deep

The Frozen Deep

The Frozen Deep was a play, originally staged as an amateur theatrical, written by Wilkie Collins along with the substantial guidance of Charles Dickens in 1856...

in Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

.

Dickens was forty-five when he met Ellen Ternan, and she was eighteen. He became passionately attached to her, but the relationship was kept secret from the general public. Dickens had become disillusioned with his wife, who lacked his energy and intellect. Ternan, in contrast, was clever and charming, forceful of character, undomesticated, and interested in literature, the theatre, and politics. Matters came to a head in 1858, when Catherine Dickens accidentally received a bracelet meant for Ternan, and the Dickenses separated that May.

Ternan left the stage in 1860, and was supported by Dickens from then on. She sometimes travelled with him, though he abandoned a plan to take her on his visit to America

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in 1867 for fear that their relationship would be publicised by the American press. She lived in houses he took under false names at Slough

Slough

Slough is a borough and unitary authority within the ceremonial county of Royal Berkshire, England. The town straddles the A4 Bath Road and the Great Western Main Line, west of central London...

 and later at Nunhead

Nunhead

Nunhead is a place in the London Borough of Southwark in London, England. It is an inner-city suburb located southeast of Charing Cross. It is the location of the Nunhead Cemetery. Nunhead has traditionally been a working-class area and, with the adjacent neighbourhoods, is currently going...

, and may have had a son by Dickens who died in infancy, although this isn't certain (neither Dickens, Ternan, nor Ternan's sisters left any account of the relationship, and most correspondence relevant to the relationship was destroyed). At his death Dickens provided her with a £1,000 legacy and sufficient income from a trust fund to ensure that she would never have to work again.

In 1876, Ternan married George Wharton Robinson, an Oxford graduate, who was twelve years her junior. She presented herself as 14 years younger (23 years old rather than 37). The couple had a son, Geoffrey, and a daughter, Gladys, and ran a boys' school in Margate

Margate

-Demography:As of the 2001 UK census, Margate had a population of 40,386.The ethnicity of the town was 97.1% white, 1.0% mixed race, 0.5% black, 0.8% Asian, 0.6% Chinese or other ethnicity....

. Ternan spent her last years in Southsea

Southsea

Southsea is a seaside resort located in Portsmouth at the southern end of Portsea Island in the county of Hampshire in England. Southsea is within a mile of Portsmouth's city centre....

, and died in Fulham

Fulham

Fulham is an area of southwest London in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, SW6 located south west of Charing Cross. It lies on the left bank of the Thames, between Putney and Chelsea. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

Ternan was the subject of a biography by Claire Tomalin

Claire Tomalin

Claire Tomalin is an English biographer and journalist. She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge.She was literary editor of the New Statesman and of the Sunday Times, and has written several noted biographies...

 in 1990. Some records relating to Ellen Ternan and her family are held by Senate House Library, University of London

In theatre and television

Simon Gray

Simon Gray

Simon James Holliday Gray, CBE , was an English playwright and memoirist who also had a career as a university lecturer in English literature at Queen Mary, University of London, for 20 years...

's play about her life, Little Nell had its world premiere in 2007 at the Theatre Royal, Bath

Theatre Royal, Bath

The Theatre Royal in Bath, England, is over 200 years old. It is one of the more important theatres in the United Kingdom outside London, with capacity for an audience of around 900....

. It was directed by Sir Peter Hall and starred Loo Brealey

Loo Brealey

Louise Brealey , also credited as Loo Brealey, is an English actress and journalist.-Early life and education:Born in Bozeat, Northamptonshire, England...

 as Ternan. The affair was featured in the docudramas Dickens

Dickens (docudrama)

Dickens was a 2002 BBC docudrama on the life of the author Charles Dickens. It was presented by Peter Ackroyd, on whose biography of Dickens it was based, and Dickens was played by Anton Lesser. It was broadcast in three hour-long episodes.-External links:...

(BBC, 2002) and Dickens' Secret Lovers (2008, Channel 4 — it was the main subject of this programme, presented by Charles Dance

Charles Dance

Walter Charles Dance, OBE is an English actor, screenwriter and director. Dance typically plays assertive bureaucrats or villains. His most famous roles are Guy Perron in The Jewel in the Crown , Dr Clemens, the doctor of penitentiary Fury 161, who becomes Ellen Ripley's confidante in Alien 3 ,...

 and with Ternan played by Amy Shiels and Dickens by David Haig

David Haig

David Haig is an Olivier Award-winning English actor and FIPA Award-winning writer. He is known for his versatility, having played dramatic, serio-comic and comedic roles, playing characters of varied social classes...

). Ternan is also featured in the novel "Drood

Drood (novel)

Drood is a 2009 novel written by Dan Simmons. It is a fictionalized account of the last five years of Charles Dickens' life told from the view point of Dickens' friend and fellow author Wilkie Collins. The title comes from Dickens' unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood...

" by Dan Simmons

Dan Simmons

Dan Simmons is an American author most widely known for his Hugo Award-winning science fiction series, known as the Hyperion Cantos, and for his Locus-winning Ilium/Olympos cycle....

.