Ellen Lawless Ternan (Nelly)
Ellen Lawless Ternan (3 March 1839 – 25 April 1914), also known as Nelly Ternan or Nelly Robinson , was an English actress who is mainly known as the mistress of Charles Dickens . 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 named Frances (later the second wife of Thomas Adolphus Trollope , the brother of Anthony Trollope ). Her parents, Thomas Lawless Ternan and Frances Eleanor Ternan (née Jarman), were both actors of some distinction. Ternan made her stage debut in Sheffield at the age of three, and she and her two sisters were presented as "infant phenomena". Ternan was considered the least theatrically gifted of the three sisters, but she worked extensively in the provinces, particularly after her father died in 1846. In 1857, she was spotted by Dickens performing at London's Haymarket Theatre . He cast her, along with her mother and one of her sisters, in a p...