Eliza Emily Donnithorne Eliza Emily Donnithorne Eliza Emily Donnithorne (c.1826 – 1886) was an Australian woman best known as a possible inspiration for the character of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens' 1861 novel "Great Expectations". Eliza Donnithorne was born at the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, and spent her early childhood in Calcutta where her father, James Donnithorne, worked for the East India Company as master of the mint and later as a judge. Her mother was Sarah Elizabeth Donnithorne, nee Bampton. Sarah Donnithorne and the couple's two older daughters died during a cholera epidemic in the 1830s. In 1838, when Eliza
Havisham poem. "Havisham" Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then I haven't wished him dead, Prayed for it so hard I've dark green pebbles for eyes, ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with. Spinster. I stink and remember. Whole days in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall; the dress yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe; the slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself, who did this to me? Puce curses that are sounds not words. Some nights better, the lost body over me, my fluent tongue in its mouth in its ear then down till I suddenly