Who Was “CDH”?
The magazine published the first serial by a Gothic novelist who is finally getting her due
The Castle of Le Blanc, by “CDH”, gripped Lady’s Magazine readers between 1816 and 1818. When this suspenseful serial began, its author’s identity was unknown. In February 1817, subscribers learnt that she was female via a poetic puzzle called a rebus that cryptically alluded to an unnamed male lover. Three months later, a reader called Henry solved the rebus with the words “Golland’s the swain belov’d by thee”. Quite who Henry was or how he knew that “CDH” was addressing a young custom’s officer named John Golland is unknown. But he was right. Catherine Day Haynes (1793–1851) married Golland in January 1821. We established that “CDH” is Catherine Day Haynes from an 1818 novel called The Foundling of Devonshire by “Miss CD Haynes, Author of The Castle of Le Blanc”.
Haynes went on to publish five more novels under her maiden and married names, the latter between the births of her five children.
Like Catherine Cuthbertson, Haynes/Golland’s contribution to the history of Gothic fiction is slowly coming to light, but her first novel The Castle of Le
Blanc has never been part of her story and is usually described as a lost work.
In fact, it was a very real serial in the Lady’s
Magazine, one so well received that the publisher of The Foundling of
Devonshire advertised it as the new work by the author of the sensational
Castle of Le Blanc.