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Favell Lee Mortimer (1802 – 1878) was an English author of geography books for children. Born Favell Lee Bevan at Russell Square, London,England, she was one of five daughters of Barclays bank co-founder David Bevan. She was raised a Quaker. Her first romantic attachment to Henry Manning ended when he married a rector's daughter. In 1841,at the age of 39 she married the Reverend Thomas Mortimer who became a very cruel husband to her. According to Todd Pruzan "For the better part of the 19th century, Mrs. Mortimer was something of a literary superstar to an impressionable audience, both in her native England and beyond." She travelled outside of her native England only twice in her lifetime.

In 1849 she wrote The Countries of Europe; Far Off; Asia and Australia Described. In 1852 she wrote Far Off, Part II, and in 1854 she wrote Africa and America Described.

According to Todd Puzan, she is one of the most outspoken, scornful, condescending and anti-Catholic writers of geographic books of the 19th century. Also according to Puzan, Mortimer was a melancholic with her personal life plagued by misery and misfortune, and she spared no wrath in her geographic descriptions of various peoples in her writings, even though she had gleaned all of her information from other books. Her descriptions of people and places were filled with vile and insulting prose.

External link

• Book reference 'The Clumsiest People in Europe' by Todd Pruzan
• Works by Favell Lee Mortimer at Project Gutenberg