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LAING, DILYS [ANWYL] (15 Oct 1906 - 1960)
(née Bennett)
1940s
Born in Wales
and immigrating to the U.S. after her marriage, Laing is primarily known as a
poet—her Collected Poems appeared
in 1967—but she published one novel, The
Great Year (1948), about three generations of a Vermont fishing
community.
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LAING, JANET [RUSSELL] (1870 - 1953)
(née Carstairs)
1900s – 1920s
Author of eight novels, some of which appear to
be light, humorous tales. Before the
Wind (1918) is an energetic comedy about a young girl serving as
companion to two eccentric women in wartime Scotland, while Wintergreen (1921) deals with a
middle-aged servant who, having survived the sinking of the Lusitania,
decides to begin a new life in the immediate postwar period. The others are The Wizard's Aunt (1903), The
Borderlanders (1904), The Man with
the Lamp (1919), The Honeycombers
(1922), The Moment More (1924), and
The Villa Jane (1929).
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LAIRD, DOROTHY [STEVENSON] (25 Jun
1912 – 21 Jan 2000)
1930s
Best known for her biography of the Queen, How the Queen Reigns (1959) a later bio of the Queen Mother
(1975), and for her adventurous
life in boating and horse racing, Laird also published two early novels, Double Cherry (1934), described as a
romance, and Opening Meet (1934)
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LAKE, EDNA [JANE] (18 Dec 1884 – 13 Dec 1968)
1920s – 1940s
Niece of Bessie MARCHANT. Schoolteacher and author of just over a dozen
children's books, including four school stories—The Right Rowena (1924), The
Wraith of Raeburn (1925), The
Mystery of Tower House School (1928), and Pamela of Peter's (1931). Other titles include The Merry Five And 'Toronto' (1920), The Mystery of the Manor (1924), Nan and the Rest (1927), Two Torments and Torrid (1927), and Mavis the Mysterious (1941). She seems
to have also published serial fiction in the 1910s. Lake worked as a
schoolteacher in Lancashire for many years. [Thanks to Christine Poole for
sharing family information about Lake.]
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LAKE, ELIZABETH (c1915 - 1976)
(pseudonym of Inez Pearn,
married names Spender and Madge, aka Inez Madge)
1940s – 1950s
Author of five novels. The first two, Spanish
Portrait (1945) and Marguerite
Reilly (1946), seem to have appeared under her second married name, the
other three, The Lovers Disturbed
(1949), The First Rebellion (1952),
and Siamese Counterpart (1958),
under her pseudonym. I reviewed The
First Rebellion, set in a girls' convent school, here. Her first marriage, to
poet Stephen Spender, lasted less than three years; she remarried Mass Observation
founder Charles Madge during World War II, and they remained together until
her premature death from cancer.
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Lake,
Rozella
see LEWIN, RITA
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Lambe, Marjory E.
see TRENERY, GLADYS GORDON
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LAMBERT,
[ALICIA] DOROTHY (DOROTHEA) (17 Feb 1884 – 28 May 1967)
(née Irwin)
1920s – 1950s
Author of more than two dozen lively, humorous
romances. Titles include Elizabeth, Who
Wouldn't (1929), Aunts in Arcady:
An Irish Idyll (1930), Moons and
Magpies (1931), Scotch Mist
(1936), Fish Out of Water (1937), Two Birds and a Stone (1939), Birds on the Wing (1943), Music While You Work (1949), Harvest Home (1950), and Something in the Air (1953). In 2020, Much Dithering (1938) was reprinted by
Dean Street Press as a Furrowed Middlebrow book. I've written about Lambert here.
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LAMBERT, ELISABETH (17 Jun 1915 – 27
Oct 2003)
(full name Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz-Tinoco, aka
Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz)
1950s
Best known as a food writer, especially on Latin American cuisine, Lambert
was born in the UK but lived in Jamaica and Australia in her childhood. She
published poetry and two novels, The
Sleeping House Party (1951), a mystery set at an Australian artist's
colony, and Father Couldn't Juggle
(1954), about a girl growing up in Jamaica.
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LAMONT, MARY (3 Feb 1897 – 12 Jan 1970)
(pseudonym of Emily Mary Buxton, née Hollins)
1950s
Author of a single novel, Roberta
(1950), and a story collection, To Live
at Random (1953). According to reviews, Roberta, which received a Book Society recommendation, is based
on the author's own troubled childhood in a large country house around 1900.
The above identification is highly likely but not certain.
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Lamour, André
see BURKE, NORAH AILEEN
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Lancaster, Vicky
see ANSLE, DOROTHY PHOEBE
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Lance, Leslie
see SWATRIDGE, IRENE MAUDE
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LANDALE, [ALICE] MARY [FRANCES] (28
May 1903 – 19 Dec 1990)
(née Ashton-Jinks)
1930s
Author of a single novel, Gregory's
Daughter (1935), about a family ruled over by a tyrannical father.
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LANE, JANE (27 May 1905 – 6 Jan 1978)
(pseudonym of Elaine Dakers, née Kidner)
1930s – 1970s
Biographer, children's author, and author of three dozen historical novels
known for their meticulous research and vivid detail. These include Undaunted (1934), Sir Devil-May-Care (1937), He
Stooped to Conquer (1943), Gin and
Bitters (1945, aka Madame Geneva),
His Fight Is Ours (1946), London Goes
to Heaven (1947), Parcel of Rogues
(1948), about Mary Queen of Scots, Fortress
in the Forth (1950), Thunder on St.
Paul's Day (1954), Cat Among the
Pigeons (1959), A Wind through the
Heather (1965), The Questing Beast
(1970), and A Secret Chronicle
(1977). She also published ten children's titles, including Escape of the King (1950), Desperate Battle (1953), The Escape of the Princess (1962), and
The Champion of the King (1966).
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LANE, MARGARET [WINIFRED] (23 Jun 1906 – 14 Feb 1994)
(married names Wallace and
Hastings)
1930s – 1960s
Journalist,
biographer, children’s author, and
author of nine novels. She was one of the few female journalists in London in
the 1920s. Her novels are Faith, Hope, No Charity (1935), which won
the Prix Femina-Vie Heureuse, At Last the Island (1937), Walk into
My Parlor (1941), about a bogus spiritualist, Where Helen Lies (1944),
A Crown of Convolvulus (1954), A Calabash of Diamonds (1961), A
Night at Sea (1964), A Smell of Burning (1965), and The Day of
the Feast (1968). Her short-lived first marriage was to the son of
thriller writer Edgar Wallace, who became the subject of her first biography.
She later published bios of Beatrix Potter and the Brontës, among others.
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Lane, Temple
see LESLIE, MARY ISABEL
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Lang, Frances
see MANTLE, WINIFRED
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LANGBRIDGE, ROSAMOND (18 Jul 1880 – 2 Jul 1964)
(married name Fletcher)
1900s – 1920s
Wife of mystery
writer J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher. Author of eight novels, largely
"marriage problem novels of a mildly racy kind" (OCEF). Titles are The Flame and the Flood (1903), The Third Experiment (1904), The
Ambush of Young Days (1906), The
Stars Beyond (1907), Imperial
Richenda: A Fantastic Comedy (1908), The
Single Eye (1924), The Golden Egg
(1927), and The Green Banks of Shannon
(1929). The Land of the Ever Young
(1920) might be children's fiction.
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Langford, Jane
see MANTLE, WINIFRED
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LANGMAID, MARGARET (8 Aug 1903 – 27 Oct 1972)
(née Tegetmeier)
1930s
Author of five
novels which appear to be humorous romances—This Charming Property (1934) is about village tensions
surrounding a new housing development, The
Yes Man (1935) deals with the uneven romance of a schoolteacher, and MacAdam and Eve (1936) is about the
pairing of a Scottish doctor and a cheerful young actress. The others are Related by Marriage (1938) and Precious Burden (1938).
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LANGSLOW, JANE (dates unknown)
(possibly pseudonym of Maud Diver?)
1930s
Unidentified co-author, with Margaret Rivers LARMINIE, of a single novel, Gory Knight (1937), a parody of the
kind of "round robin" detective novels popular at the time. Martin
Edwards discusses the novel here, along with the possibility that she is actually
Larminie's sister, Maud DIVER.
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LANGTON, JOY (9 Feb 1916 – 13 Apr
1991)
(pseudonym of Edith Hermione Veryl Gordon Langton,
married name Morris)
1930s - 1950
Author of seven novels, including Cannibal
Feast (1937), set in the New Hebrides and based on the adventures of
artist Charles Gordon-Frazer, an uncle of Langton. The others are Blind Arrows (1938), Sabina (1943), Pro Tem (1945), Broken
Circle (1946), Thin Bread and
Butter (1948), and Halt (1950).
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LARGE, DOROTHY M[ABEL]. (1891 – 21 Apr
1942)
(née Lumley, aka D. M. Large)
1930s – 1940s
Poet, children's author, and novelist whose work often focuses on Anglo-Irish
life in the country. Novels include Cloonagh
(1932), The Open Arms (1933), Man of the House (1939), The Onlooker (1940), and The Quiet Place (1941), the last of
which is set in an Irish boarding house among English folk fleeing German
bombs. I've written about her here. Her Irish-themed tales were collected in Irish Airs (1932), An Irish Medley (1934), and Talk in the Townlands (1937). The Kind Companion (1936) and The Glen of the Sheep (1938) appear to
be for children.
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LARKINS, VIOLA [MAUD] (28 Oct 1886 – 1953)
1920s – 1930s
Author of four novels—The Everlasting
Hills (1924), Windflower
(1925), To-Morrow Fair (1931), and The Glory and the Dream (1932). A
blurb for the last describes it as about "a man and a woman who because
of their selfish intolerance and narrowness of vision, bring disaster on
themselves."
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LARMINIE, MARGARET RIVERS (6 Sept 1885 – 31 Mar 1964)
(married name Tragett)
1920s – 1930s
Cousin of mystery writer Margaret YORKE and author of eight novels. Bookman called her 1924 novel Deep Meadows a "very long novel
concerning marriage and its ramifications." The others are Search (1922), Echo (1923), Soames Green
(1925), Galatea (1928), The Visiting Moon (1932), Doctor Sam (1933), and Gory Knight (1937). The last is a
parody mystery—see Martin Edwards' discussion of it here. Edwards—reading the
novel with Yorke, a distant cousin of Larminie's—concluded: "The story
parodies the celebrated detectives Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey (and his
manservant Bunter), Reggie Fortune, Dr Priestley and Inspector
French—although the French character appears only in the final stages of the
book. The sleuths gather, by improbable means, in an English country house,
and are immediately greeted by the disappearance of the cook (the eponymous
Ms Knight.) It is an entertaining piece of work. The plot is slight, and
stretched out excessively, but to my mind there is much pleasure to be had in
the way MRL and ‘Jane Langslow’ render the eccentricities of Poirot, Wimsey
and Bunter in particular."
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LASKI, MARGHANITA (24 Oct 1915
– 6 Feb 1988)
(née Esther Pearl Laski,
married name Howard, aka Sarah Russell)
1940s – 1950s
Novelist, broadcaster, playwright, critic, biographer, and religious scholar.
Though best known in her lifetime for her work as a BBC broadcaster on The Brains Trust and other programs,
she is now known as one of Persephone's major rediscoveries. She wrote six
extraordinarily diverse novels. Love on
the Supertax (1944) is a satirical wartime work dealing with the decline
of the upper classes and the wartime black market. To Bed with Grand Music (1946), written under her pseudonym, is
the darker tale of a young wife whose boredom, while her husband is serving
abroad, leads her into a series of affairs. Tory Heaven (1948, inexplicably published in the US as Toasted English) is a rollicking
"mock utopia" set in a postwar world in which traditional class
structures have been codified into law. Little Boy Lost (1949) is about a father searching for his missing son in postwar France. The
Village (1952), my personal favorite, is about the aftermath of the war's
breakdown of class relations, in the form of two families—an upper crust
family and that of their former housekeeper—who have to come to terms with
being united by marriage. And The Victorian Chaise-Longue (1953) is a
harrowing novella about a woman who falls asleep on a chaise-longue and
awakens in the body of a Victorian woman. Along similar lines, her short
story, "The Tower" (1955), which appeared in Cynthia Asquith's The Third Ghost Book, is a terrifying
timeslip tale of black magic haunting a tower in Italy. Apologies (1955) is a collection of humorous magazine pieces,
with "apologies" indicating the clichés and pleasantries people use
to avoid serious issues. I wrote about "The Tower" and Apologies here.
Laski was reportedly horrified by the 1953 film version of Little Boy Lost, which unfathomably reinterpreted
it as a musical starring Bing Crosby. Laski wrote one play, The Offshore Island (1959), set after
a nuclear holocaust, several works of criticism, including works about George
Eliot, Jane Austen, and Rudyard Kipling, and several intellectual works about
religion, approached from the perspective of her own atheism. For several
decades, Laski, was a voluntary reader for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement, researching old sales
catalogues, crime fiction, periodicals, and other sources for arcane terms.
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LATHAM, KATHERINE WRIGHT (29 Jun 1871 – 16 May 1941)
(née Murray, aka Mrs.
Albert G. Latham)
1900s – 1920s
Author of children’s fiction—initially for younger readers, but later work
includes books for older readers, such as The
Young Crofters (1920), A Summer at
“The Barn” (1923), and Those Two
and the Queer Folk (1928).
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LAVERTY, MAURA (15 May 1907 – 21 Jul 1966)
(née Kelly)
1940s
Novelist, journalist, playwright, and soap opera screenwriter. Her first
novel, Never No More (1942), based
on her own childhood in Kildare, was enormously successful and critically
acclaimed. Its sequel, No More Than
Human (1944), followed her time as a young governess in Spain in the
1920s. Her most enduring work, however, was Lift up your Gates (1946, aka Liffey
Lane), a novel about Dublin slum life which, along with additional plays
continuing the story, was adapted for stage and for a television soap opera
as Tolka Row. Her other novel was Alone We Embark (1943, aka Touched by the Thorn), and she also
published two children's titles, The
Cottage in the Bog (1946, aka Gold
of Glanaree) and Green Orchard
(1949), and three cookbooks—the wartime Flour
Economy (1941), Kind Cooking
(1946), and Full and Plenty (1960),
the last of which was particularly successful. A collection of her fairy
tales, The Queen of Aran's Daughter,
was published in 1995 with illustrations by her daughter. A bit of trivia: In
her youth, Laverty worked for a time as secretary to Elizabeth BIBESCO.
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LAVIN, MARY (11 Jun 1912 – 25 Mar 1996)
(married names Walsh and
Scott)
1940s – 1990s
Though born in the
U.S., Lavin and her Irish parents returned to Ireland while she was a child,
and her work focuses on women's lives in Ireland. She wrote primarily
stories, publishing more than a dozen collections in all, including the
much-praised Tales from Bective
Bridge (1942), but she did publish two novels The House in Clewe Street (1945) and Mary O'Grady (1950), which were
reprinted by Virago in the 1980s. In the 1950s and 1960s Lavin published a
series known as the "widow stories," featuring a widow named Vera,
based on Lavin's own experiences after her husband's death. She also
published three children's books—A
Likely Story (1957), The
Second-Best Children in the World (1972), and The Story of the Widow's Son (1993).
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LAVRIN, NORA (10 Sept 1897 – 30 Aug 1985)
(née Fry)
1950s
Primarily known as an artist and illustrator of children's books by other
authors (including Hilda LEWIS and Elisabeth KYLE) as well as adult novels,
she also co-wrote, with Molly THORP, a single children's novel, The Hop Dog (1952), which was later
filmed as Adventure in the Hopfields
(1954). Some of her artworks documenting the Women's Land Army in World War
II are now in the collection of the Imperial War Museum.
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LAW, JOHN (28 Feb 1854 – 10 Dec 1923)
(pseudonym of Margaret Elise Harkness)
Journalist and novelist
involved with socialism in her youth and later with the Salvation Army. Best
known for In Darkest London (1890),
focused on the Salvation Army and how London's temptations can lead youth
astray. She published at least seven novels, many reflecting her interest in
politics and labour, including A City
Girl (1887), Out of Work
(1888), set around the events of "bloody Sunday", A Manchester Shirtmaker (1890), George Eastmont: Wanderer (1905), Captain Lobe (1915), The Horoscope (1915), set in Sri
Lanka, and A Curate's Promise: A Story
of Three Weeks, September 14-October 5, 1917 (1921). She travelled a lot
in India and published Glimpses of
Hidden India (1909, revised as Indian
Snapshots in 1912). She was a second cousin of Beatrice Webb and trained
with her to be a nurse.
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LAWFORD, FLORENCE (18 Aug 1871 – 11 Sept 1946)
1920s – 1940s
Author of 17
romantic novels, some historical in setting. According to blurbs, The Bridge of Hope (1939) is set in a
Swiss town above a ravine, while Dear
Downlands (1941) traces "three generations of middle-class family
life in the nineteenth century. Others include The Eyes of a Hawk (1926), The
Blue Pochette (1929), "Merryheart"
(1932), Bogey Lane (1935), and Daffodil Terrace (1943). She also
published the non-fiction Flowers in
History (1933).
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LAWRENCE, MARGERY (8 Aug 1889 – 13 Nov 1969)
(married name Towle)
1920s – 1970s
Author of more than three dozen volumes of fiction, many featuring
supernatural or uncanny themes. These include the collections Nights of the Round Table (1926), The Terraces of Night, Being Further
Chronicles of the Club of the Round Table (1932), Strange Caravan (1941), and Number
Seven Queer Street (1945). The
Madonna of Seven Moons (1931) is a novel dealing with split personality,
and The Bridge of Wonder (1939)
with spiritualism. The
Rent in the Veil (1951) is
a timeslip tale, and The Tomorrow of
Yesterday (1966) deals with Atlantis. Other fiction includes Red Heels (1924), Fine Feathers (1928), Madame
Holle (1934), Emma of Alkistan
(1953), Skivvy (1961), The Yellow Triangle (1965), and Autumn Rose (1971).
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LAWS, BETTY (BESSIE) (17 Apr 1899 – 28 Jan 1981)
1920s – 1930s
Author of five girls' school stories, the first four—The New Head—and Barbara (1925), The Girls of Dormitory Ten (1926), Pam and the Fearless Fourth (1927), and The Girls of Stornham Central (1929)—praised by Sims & Clare,
the last—Kidnappers at Elmhurst School
(1939)—distinctly not.
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LAYCOCK, MARGARET (dates unknown)
1930s
Untraced author of three school stories which, according to Sims & Clare,
are as focused on staff as on students—Form
IV Does Its Bit (1934), Ann's
Difficult Term (1935), and Fifth
Form Crisis (1937). She was apparently a teacher herself in a London day
school.
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Lazarus,
Marguerite
see GILBERT, ANNA
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LE BAS, MARY (dates unknown)
1930s
Unidentified author of two novels. A blurb describes Castle Walk (1934) as "the struggles of a charming young
woman to earn her living in the big city", and E. M. DELAFIELD called it
"very fresh and amusing". Second
Thoughts (1935), reviewed here, is about a successful young novelist in London who
falls in love and decides to stop writing, but finds it more difficult than
anticipated. If we assume the name is not a pseudonym, the author could be
Mary Louisa Le Bas, 1914-1986, married name Turnbull, but I can't prove it.
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LE FEUVRE, AMY (AMELIA) [SOPHIA] (1861 – 29 Apr 1929)
(aka Mary Thurston Dodge)
1890s – 1920s
Prolific author of fiction for children and adults, most with Christian
themes. Titles include On the Edge of a
Moor (1897), The Carved Cupboard
(1899), Odd Made Even (1902), The Chateau by the Lake (1907), Four Gates (1912), Joan's Handful (1915), and A Madcap Family, or, Sybil's Home
(1916).
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LE FLEMING, ROSALIND [BEATRICE
BENEDICTA] (9 Jul 1901 – 11 Jan 1983)
(née Lees)
1930s
Author of two novels, Roast Beef on
Sunday (1933) and Tomorrow to Fresh
Woods (1936), about which little information is available. The latter is
set in British Malaya, where the author lived following her marriage to
artist and railway engineer Hugh Le Fleming.
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LE PLA, LILLIE (18 Oct 1894 – 12 Feb 1957)
1920s
Author of seven
children’s adventure tales—The Call of
the Dawn (1922), Round the Corner
(1924), The Secret Shore (1925), The Secret of Desborough House (1926),
Tangletrees (1927), The Treasure of Monk's Burn (1928),
and The Secret of the Wood (1928).
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LEA, JOCELYN CLARE (23 Jul 1889 – 8 Jun 1971)
(née Lea)
1920s
Poet and author of four humorous novelss—Bringing
Up Dinah (1927), Waste (1929), Cork the Conqueror (1929), described
by the Spectator as "wild
farce," and Cinderella's Country
House (1930), about a woman reluctantly running a residential hotel. Her
maiden and married names were the same because she married a cousin.
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LEACH, D[ORIS]. L[ILY]. (25 Feb 1897 –
21 May 1974)
(née Bark, earlier married name Cox)
1940s
Author of two novels—Cleveland View
(1944), set in the Cleveland Hills in Yorkshire, not in Cleveland, Ohio, and Restless Tides (1947)—as well as one
children's book, Sally the Hare
(1947). Her brother was journalist and author Conrad Voss Bark, known for his
writings about fishing. Until recently, Leach remained a mystery, but John
Herrington was able to track her down.
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Leader, Barbara
see BLACKBURN, [EVELYN] BARBARA
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LEAR, WINIFRED (28 Jan 1907 – 14 Jun 2002)
(full name Winifred Lear
Heap)
1940s
Schoolteacher
and principal and author of two novels. The
Causeway (1948) is set just before and during the Blitz—according to Saturday Review, "Most of the
action is centered about a rectory that conceals briefly madness, cancer,
love, hate, and frustration." I wrote about it here. Shady
Cloister (1950) is set at a girls' boarding school in South London. Lear
also published a memoir, Down the
Rabbit Hole (1975), about her own early school days in Crewe during and
after World War I. She appears to have also privately published at least
three more books, which seem to be short sketches and observations.
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Leaver,
Ruth
see TOMALIN, RUTH
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Lee,
Rowena
see BARTLETT, MARIE
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LEES, EDITH [MARY OLDHAM] (1861 – 14 Sept 1916)
(married name Ellis, aka
Mrs. Havelock Ellis)
1890s – 1910s
Activist and wife of sexologist Havelock Ellis (though she was also openly
lesbian, and Ellis wrote about their open relationship in his memoir, My Life [1939]). She published several
novels, including Seaweed: A Cornish Idyll (1898), My Cornish
Neighbours (1906), Attainment
(1909), The Imperishable Wing
(1911), and Love-Acre (1914). Her
1915 volume, Love in Danger, is a
collection of three plays.
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Lees, Marguerite
see BAUMANN, MARGARET
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LEESON, MAUDE (dates unknown)
1910s – 1920s
Untraced author
of six novels. Earlier titles, such as The
Fords of Hilton Langley (1913) and The
Marriage of Cecilia (1914), the latter about a marriage of convenience
that inevitably becomes something more, seem fairly light, while later works,
such as God's Price (1920), about a
divorced couple whose relationship is complicated by their daughter, sound a
bit more serious. The others are Still
Waters (1922), The Discretion of
Decima (1912) and The Stepsister
(1915).
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LEGGE, MARGARET (22 Aug 1872 – 3 Apr 1957)
1910s – 1920s
Author of seven novels, which OCEF
compares with those of May SINCLAIR. Titles are A Semi-Detached Marriage (1912), The Price of Stephen Bonynge (1913), The Rebellion of Esther (1914), The Wane of Uxenden (1917), A
Tempestuous Daughter (1924), The
Spell of Atlantis (1927), and The
Crystal Rabbit (1929).
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LEGION, A. (dates unknown)
1920s
Untraced author of a single girls' school story, The Three Helens (1927), which traces the evolution of a school
over time, from the points of view of three successive girls.
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LEHMANN, BEATRIX (1 Jul 1903 – 31 Jul 1979)
1930s
Successful actress, sister of Rosamond LEHMANN and publisher John Lehmann,
and author of two novels, But Wisdom
Lingers (1932) and Rumours of
Heaven (1934), the latter of which was reprinted by Virago in the 1980s
and is, according to Kirkus, "a story of a family escaping life into a
dream world of their own." I wrote about both novels here.
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LEHMANN, ROSAMOND [NINA] (3 Feb 1901 – 12 Mar 1990)
(married names Runciman
and Philipps)
1920s – 1950s, 1970s
Sister of
Beatrix LEHMANN and publisher John Lehmann. Seen as the quintessential
“women’s writer” during her lifetime, Lehmann’s critical reputation has
improved significantly since many of her novels were reprinted by Virago. Dusty Answer (1927) was controversial
for its portrayal of lesbianism but also a popular success. Her second novel,
A Note in Music (1930), was poorly
received, but then followed her four most famous works—Invitation to the Waltz (1932), about a young girl's experiences
at her first dance, The Weather in the
Streets (1936), a sequel following her into adulthood and an affair with
a married man (Carmen Callil of Virago famously called it her generation's Bridget Jones's Diary), The Ballad and the Source (1944), set
in the early years of the 20th century, and The Echoing Grove (1953), which makes use of Lehmann's own
experiences of Blitz and wartime conditions. Following the sudden death of
her daughter in 1958, Lehmann only rarely published, moving toward
spiritualism in her life and her remaining works. Her memoir, The Swan in the Evening, appeared in
1967, and she published one final novel, the poorly-received A Sea-Grape Tree (1976). She also
published one story collection, The
Gypsy’s Baby and Other Stories (1949).
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LEIGH, MARGARET MARY (17 Dec 1894 – 7
Apr 1973)
1920s – 1930s
Poet, memoirist, and novelist who often wrote about crofters in Scotland.
She published two novels, The Passing
of the Pengwerns (1924) and Love
the Destroyer (1938), as well as several memoirs of farm life, including Highland Homespun (1936), Harvest of the Moor (1937), Spade Among the Rushes (1949), and The Fruit in the Seed (1952). Leigh
entered a convent in 1950.
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LEIGH, MARY (dates unknown)
(pseudonym of Beryl or Beyrl Randall?)
Untraced author
of three novels—Pure Palace (1944),
set in 7th century India, False World,
Goodnight (1946), and The Company's
Servant (1947), based on the life of Robert, Lord Clive. Her possible
real name above stems from a signed copy of one of the books listed on Abe
Books, described as having the inscription "…best wishes from Beyrl
'Mary Leigh' Randall," but we're not certain if the bookseller
misspelled "Beryl" or if Beyrl, apparently an actual name as well,
was correct. Some possible candidates appear in public records, but there is
nothing to say which is the author.
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Leigh, Olivia
see CLAMP, HELEN MARY
ELIZABETH
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Leigh,
Roberta
see LEWIN, RITA
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Leigh,
Ursula
see GWYNN, URSULA [GRACE]
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LEIGHTON, MARIE [FLORA BARBARA] (4 Feb 1865 – 28 Jan 1941)
(née Harris, aka Mrs.
Robert Leighton, aka Marie Connor Leighton)
1880s – 1930s
Mother of Ronald Leighton, Vera BRITTAIN's fiancé
who was killed in WWI and features prominently in her classic memoir Testament of Youth. Author of 60+
volumes of fiction, many of them mysteries or crime-related potboilers. OCEF singles out several with female
protagonists, including Joan Mar,
Detective (1910), The Bride of
Dutton Market (1911), and Lucile
Dare, Detective (1919). Others include Beauty's Queen (1884), The
Harvest of Sin (1898), A Napoleon
of the Press (1900), Her Ladyship's
Silence (1907), Justice!
(1910), Ducks and Drakes (1913), Human Nature (1916), Every Man Has His Price (1917), Her Fate and His (1921), The Torry Diamonds Mystery (1930), and
The Silence of Dr Duveen (1937).
She also wrote her own memoir of her son, Boy
of My Heart (1917), which seems to be as gushing and sentimental as the
title would imply. Steve at Bear Alley unearthed her correct maiden name and
a lot more information here.
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LEIGHTON,
WING (dates unknown)
(pseudonym of an unknown "Mrs. Gammie")
1940s
Author of a single
novel, Whistle Me Over the Water
(1944), described by the Observer
as "a romantic story of a love-crossed land-girl with a spy chase to
finish. Dreamily readable—like a cathedral close tea-shop." Her
publisher's archive says the name is the pseudonym of a Mrs. Gammie, but she
has not been further identified.
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LEITCH, ELIZABETH (dates unknown)
1930s, 1950s
Unidentified author of four children's titles—The Raiders' Road (1937), The
Two Houses by the Shore (1938), The
Saturday Club (1940), and The
Family at Kilmory (1955). Some or all of these seem to have Scottish
settings, and most were reprinted at least once.
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LEITH,
MRS. DISNEY (1840 – 19 Feb 1926)
(pseudonym
of Mary Charlotte Julia Leith, née Gordon)
1860s – 1910s
Poet, translator (from Icelandic), children's author, and novelist.
Much of her work is Victorian, but her late novels, including A Black Martinmas (1912) and its
sequel Lachlan's Widow (1913), fall
within my scope. She was a cousin of Algernon Charles Swinburne.
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Lenanton, C.
see OMAN, CAROLA
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Lennox, Edward
see MAYER-NIXSON, EDITH MAY
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LEONARD, BERTHA (22 Sept 1883 - ????)
(pseudonym of Bertha
Howick, married name Fry)
1920s – 1940s
Mother of Leonora FRY. Author of about eighteen children's titles, of which
several are girls' school stories. Titles include Stella's Victory (1926), Daphne
the Day Girl (1927), An Upper
Fourth Feud (1928), The Rivals of
Redlands (1931), Silverways Manor
School (1936), and The Castle
School Mystery (1938). Steve at Bear Alley did research on Leonard and
her daughter here.
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Leonard,
Charles L.
see HEBERDEN, MARY VIOLET
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LESLIE, DORIS (9 Mar 1891 – 31 May 1982)
(née Oppenheim, later
married names Cookes and Hannay)
1920s – 1970s
Author of more than 30 novels, many historical in subject. Full Flavour (1934) is about a woman
who takes over her father's business with great success. Fair Company (1936) traces multiple generations of one family. House in the Dust (1942) deals with a
house, bombed in the Blitz, which triggers a woman's memories of her
Victorian childhood. She also published several novels based on the lives of
well-known figures. Other titles include The
Starling (1927), The Echoing Green
(1929), Puppets Parade (1932), Concord in Jeopardy (1938), Polonaise (1943), The Peverills (1946), That
Enchantress (1950), Peridot Flight
(1956), I Return (1962, aka Vagabond's Way), The Marriage of Martha Todd (1968), The Dragon's Head (1973), and Crown
of Thorns (1979). Later in life, she published several well-received
biographies, whose subjects include François Villon, Elizabeth Chudleigh, and
Richard the Lionheart.
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Leslie, Henrietta
see SCHUTZE, GLADYS HENRIETTA
|
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Leslie, Josephine
see DICK, R. A.
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LESLIE, MARY ISABEL (1899 – 18 Feb 1978)
(aka Jean Herbert, aka Temple Lane)
1920s – 1950s
Irish nationalist, lecturer, poet, and author of more than 30 romantic
novels, including Burnt Bridges
(1925), Watch the Wall (1927), Blind Wedding (1931), The Trains Go South (1938), House of My Pilgrimage (1941), Curlews (1946), The Magnolia Flower (1950), Desert
Locust (1951), Hall of Lost
Footsteps (1953), The Desert's a
Woman (1955), and French Violet
(1956).
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LESSELLS, KITTY (dates unknown)
1940s – 1950s
Unidentified author of 10 romantic novels—Sophisticated
Nymps (1940), A Million Women
Sighed (1942), Yesterday's Orchids
(1943), With All My Heart (1944), Unconditionally Yours (1946), Live Again, Love Again (1947), I Kiss Your Hands (1948), Journey of My Heart (1950), Woman Proposes (1951), and If You Were Mine (1955).
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LESSING, DORIS [MAY] (22 Oct 1919 – 17 Nov 2013)
(née Taylor, earlier
married name Wisdom, aka Jane Somers)
1950s – 2000s
2007 Nobel Prize winner, author of more than 30 works of fiction, as well as
memoirs and other non-fiction. Best known for The Golden Notebook (1962), a classic novel about a woman attempting to
unite her political, emotional, sexual, and creative lives. Some of her early
fiction makes use of her childhood and youth in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and
she later experimented with the science-fiction genre in the series Canopus
in Argos: Archives (1979-1983) and in Memoirs
of a Survivor (1973). Other novels include The Grass Is Singing (1950), Briefing
for a Descent into Hell (1971), The
Diary of a Good Neighbour (1983, as Jane Somers), The Good Terrorist (1985), The
Fifth Child (1988), and The
Sweetest Dream (2001). Her memoirs include Under My Skin: to 1949 (1994) and Walking in the Shade: 1949-1962 (1997),
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LESTER, CAROLINE (dates unknown)
1940s
Untraced author of a single girls' school story, Pat on Her Own (1949).
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LESTER, LOUISE (dates unknown)
1930s
Untraced author of a single short romance, A Ladies' Man (1931).
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LETHBRIDGE, OLIVE (1885 – 24 Feb 1971)
(married name Banbury)
1910s, 1930s,
1950s
Author of nine novels in all, including two early collaborations—The Marriage Maze (1911, with Gerald
Beresford Fitzgerald) and The King's
Master (1912, with John de Stourton), six Mills & Boon romances in
the 1930s, most set in exotic locales—The
Dancer of El Touran (1931), As a
Lioness That Sleeps (1931), Where
Caravans Pass By (1935), African
Orchestra (1936), The Ladies of
Shalm-a-Dar (1936), and Tropical
Island (1937)—and one late novel, The
Black Parrot (1950), based on a play by H. Fletcher Lee.
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LETHBRIDGE, SYBIL [MCGREGOR] CAMPBELL (7 Jan 1874 – 20 Jan 1945)
(née Allen, earlier
married name Lonergan)
1910s – 1940s
Author of forty volumes of fiction. Gnats
and Camels (1924) is about a young woman rebelling against her stuffy
family. Bookman described The Wild Feather (1933) thus:
"Here is a villain of a builder who seeks to destroy the beauty of an
unspoilt seaside place in Cornwall; here is the heroine, fifty-five years of
age but still beautiful and admired—a Lady Bountiful, who has in the past
outwitted him." Other titles include The
Shoreless Sea (1912), The Marauders
(1917), Hard and Fast (1923), The Odds Against Her (1925), Tawny Eyes (1929), The Long Day's Task (1931), Sweet Fruit (1935), Won by Fraud (1937), Old Hillersley's Heiress (1940), A Runaway Wife: The Winning of Lady Tory
(1942), and The Golden Snare
(1946). Steve at Bear Alley researched her life here. I wrote briefly about Misfits (1920) here.
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LETTS, MARY FELICIA S[IMEON]. (1875 –
15 Mar 1959)
1910s
Co-author, with her sister Winifred LETTS, of a single volume of stories, Helmet & Cowl: Stories of Monastic
& Military Orders (1913). Her birth was registered in the first
quarter of 1876, but she was baptised on 27 Dec 1875.
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LETTS, WINIFRED M[ABEL]. (Feb 1882 – 7 Jun 1972)
(married name Verschoyle)
1900s – 1930s
Playwright, biographer, poet, children's author, and novelist. Her children's
titles include Waste Castle: A Book for
Girls (1907), Bridget of All Work
(1909), Naughty Sophia (1912), Pomona and Co. (1934), and The Gentle Mountain (1939). Adult
novels include The Story-Spinner
(1907), The Rough Way (1912), Christina's Son (1915), What Happened Then? (1921), and Knockmaroon (1933). With her sister
Mary Felicia LETTS, she published Helmet
& Cowl: Stories of Monastic and Military Orders (1913).
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LEVERSON, ADA [ESTHER] (10 Oct 1862 – 30 Aug 1933)
(née Moses)
1900s – 1910s
Literary hostess, friend of Oscar Wilde, and author of six witty social
comedies, including those Virago published as The Little Ottleys—Love's
Shadow (1908), Tenterhooks
(1912), and Love at Second Sight
(1916)—as well as The Twelfth Hour
(1907), The Limit (1909), and Bird of Paradise (1914). According to
her ODNB entry, she was one of
Wilde's few defenders when the scandal surrounding his homosexuality broke,
taking him into her home during the trial and greeting him outside the prison
when he was released. Among her other friends were Aubrey Beardsley, Max
Beerbohm, the Sitwells, and Ronald Firbank. Her fiction is said to have
influenced the work of Firbank and Evelyn Waugh, among others.
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LEWIN, RITA (22 Dec 1926 - 19 Dec 2014)
(née Shulman, aka Rachel
Lindsay, aka Rozella Lake, aka Roberta Leigh, aka Janey Scott)
1950s – 1990s
Romance novelist, children's author, and television screenwriter and
producer. Author of well over 150 works of fiction. Her romance novels,
according to Twentieth-Century Romance
and Historical Writers, "show passionate physical attraction between
people from vastly different backgrounds, holding vastly different beliefs
and values" and their events are sometimes wildly implausible. Sample
titles include In Name Only (1951),
Beloved Ballerina (1953), Alien Corn (1954), Mask of Gold (1956), The Taming of Laura (1959), Moonlight and Magic (1962), Design for Murder (1964), Cinderella in Mink (1973), Affair in Venice (1975), Rough Diamond Lover (1978), The Savage Aristocrat (1978), Untouched Wife (1981), Too Bad to Be True (1987), and Bachelor at Heart (1992). Her
children's stories were mostly published under her Leigh pseudonym, though
she also published the Sara Gay stories, about a young model, using her Scott
pseudonym. According to her Wikipedia page, she was the first British woman
television producer to have her own production company. She created several
puppet series for children and wrote many of the episodes.
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LEWIS, [JANET] EILUNED (1 Nov 1900 – 15 Apr 1979)
(married name Hendrey)
1930s – 1940s
Welsh author of two
novels—Dew on the Grass (1934), an
autobiographical view of the Welsh countryside through the eyes of a
9-year-old girl, and The Captain's Wife
(1945), set in a 19th century cathedral town in Pembrokeshire. The novels
have received increased attention in recent years thanks to their reprinting
by Honno Classics. Lewis also published poetry and several books about the
Welsh countryside, including The Land
of Wales (1937), written with her brother Peter, and Honey Pots and Brandy Bottles (1954). Her memoir is The Old Home (1981). I wrote about The Captain's Wife here.
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LEWIS, ETHELREDA (1875 – 1 Aug 1946)
(née Ethel Howe, married
name Smith, aka R. Hernekin Baptist)
1920s – 1930s
Best known for editing (or perhaps ghostwriting) the memoirs of Alfred
Aloysius Horn, a prominent African trader, Lewis also wrote several
adventures making use of her own knowledge of Africa. Titles are The Harp (1925), The Flying Emerald (1925), Mantis
(1926), and Wild Deer (1933).
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Lewis,
Gwendolen Hudson
see FORREST, NOEL
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|
Lewis, H. H.
see BURLEIGH, HILARY
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LEWIS, HILDA [WINIFRED] (9 Mar 1896 – 31
Jan 1974)
1930s – 1970s
Historical novelist and
children's author best known for The
Ship That Flew (1939), about a toy ship that travels in time, which was
reprinted in the Oxford Children's Modern Classics series in the 1990s. She
only wrote a handful of other children's books—The Gentle Falcon (1952), Here
Comes Harry (1960), and Harold Was
My King (1970). Her primary focus was historical fiction for adults,
though a few were based on notorious real-life crimes. The latter include Said Dr. Spendlove (1940, aka Case of the Little Doctor), focusing
on the Crippen case, Strange Story
(1945), a tale of two twin girls, one of whom murders the other, and A Mortal Malice (1963), which deals
with the 17th century poisoning of Sir Overbury in the Tower of London. The
last is one of historian Alison Weir's favorite novels—see what Weir has to
say about Lewis, and about her other favorites, here. Lewis's
other titles include Pegasus Yoked
(1933), Imogen Under Glass (1943), The Day Is Ours (1947), More Glass Than Wall (1950), Wife to Henry V (1954), I, Jacqueline (1957), Call Lady Purbeck (1951), Wife to the Bastard (1966), and Rose of England (1977). The Witch and the Priest (1956) was
reprinted in recent years by Valancourt Books and deals with the ghost of a
witch who tells her story to a priest condemning other women to death for
witchcraft.
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LEWIS, LORNA [CONCANEN] (24 Jun 1900 – 27 Nov 1962)
1930s – 1960s
Secretary (and roommate for a time) of E. M. DELAFIELD and author of more
than two dozen children's books, including some early titles for young
children. Tea and Hot Bombs (1943)
follows a teenage girl as she begins work with the Mobile Canteen Corps
during the Blitz in London. Feud in the
Factory (1944) is also set during World War II. Lewis also wrote
biographies for young readers, girls' career stories—including June Grey: Fashion Student (1953), Valerie: Fashion Model (1955), and Judy Bowman: Therapist (1956)—and what
looks like a school story, Spring
School (1958), not mentioned in Sims and Clare. Other titles include Mystery at Lock House (1947), Marriotts Go North (1949), Mystery at Winton's Park (1952), Hotel Doorway (1953), Shirley Goes Travelling (1959), and Shirley Goes to America (1961). I
reviewed Tea and Hot Bombs here.
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LEWTY, MARJORIE (8 Apr 1906 – 21 Jan
2002)
(née Lobb)
1950s – 1990s
Author of about three dozen romances for Mills & Boon, including Never Call It Loving (1958), The Imperfect Secretary (1959), Alex Rayner, Dental Nurse (1965), Flowers in Stony Places (1975), To Catch a Butterly (1977), A Girl Bewitched (1981), Makeshift Marriage (1982), Riviera Romance (1984), A Kiss Is Still a Kiss (1989), Step in the Dark (1994), and A Real Engagement (1999). A couple of
gaps in her publishing history make me wonder if there are more under an
as-yet-unknown pseudonym.
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LEY, ALICE [MARY] CHETWYND (12 Oct 1913 – 4 Oct 2004)
(née Humphrey)
1950s – 1980s
Author of
nearly 20 historical romances, including The
Jewelled Snuff Box (1959), The
Georgian Rake (1960), Letters for a
Spy (1970), The Beau and the
Bluestocking (1975), and The
Intrepid Miss Hayden (1983). In the 1980s, she wrote three historical
crime novels—A Reputation Dies
(1984), A Fatal Assignation (1987),
and Masquerade of Vengeance (1989).
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Lilburn, Adam
see WASSERMANN, LILLIAS
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LIMEBEER, ENA [VICTORIA] (17 Jun 1898 –
17 Nov 1984)
(married name Mitrany)
1930s
Acclaimed painter and author
of two novels of village life, Market
Town (1931) and The Dove and
Roebuck (1932). She also published one volume of poetry with the Hogarth
Press in 1923. She was married to scholar and theorist David Mitrany. I wrote
about The Dove and Roebuck and gave
a glimpse of two of her paintings (which I liked much better than the novel) here.
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LIND, MARIE JEANNE (dates unknown)
1940s
Untraced author of a single book, Patsy
(1940), partly set in a girls' school, though focused more on outlandish
adventures outside of school.
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LINDA, CORA (12 Aug 1885 – 1 Oct 1981)
(pseudonym of Coralie Marie Plummer, possibly née
Linder)
1920s – 1960s
Wife of crime novelist T. Arthur Plummer and mother of romance novelist Clare
EMSLEY. Author of numerous romances, many of them published as inexpensive
"pocket" or "dime" novels. Titles include The Woman Hater (1925), A Woman Cheated (1930), Her Broken Plaything (1931), The Man With Two Brides (1933), A Wife in Exile (1934), No Child of Their Own (1941), and Why She Wouldn't Marry (1948). Steve
at Bear Alley shared his research on her here and her daughter here.
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LINDEN, JANE (1920 - ????)
(pseudonym of Hilda Jane
Snartt, married name Domville)
1940s
Author of three novels—This Inconstancy
(1946), Rainbows Don’t Last (1946),
and Tomorrow Has a Dawn (1948),
about which little is known. She and her husband may have emigrated to
Canada, as it's known that he died in British Columbia in 1982, but no trace
of her later life has been unearthed. She is not to be confused with Pamela
Yendys Walton, who used the name Jane Linden for a single volume of poems.
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Linden,
Sara
see BARTLETT, MARIE
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LINDSAY, KATHLEEN [MARY] (1903 - 1973)
(aka Mary Richmond, aka
Molly Waring, aka Betty Manners, aka Elizabeth Fenton, aka Mary Faulkner, aka
Jane Darnley, aka Margaret Cameron, aka Hugh Desmond, aka Nigel MacKenzie)
1920s – 1970s
Hugely prolific author who appeared in a 1980s edition of the Guiness Book of
World Records for the largest number of novels by a single author, Guiness
crediting her with a total of 904. She wrote under numerous pseudonyms, and
her work includes historical and romantic fiction as well as mysteries. As
Hugh Desmond, she published around 30 mysteries featuring Scotland Yard
detective Alas Fraser, as well as additional mysteries and thrillers. Those
titles include The Hand of Vengeance
(1945), Death Walks in Scarlet (1948),
The Death Parade (1954), Lady, Where Are You? (1957), The Case of the Blue Orchid (1961), Bodies in a Cupboard (1963), Murder Strikes at Dawn (1965), and Murder on the Moor (1967).
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Lindsay,
Rachel
see LEWIN, RITA
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Lindsey, Olive
see GROOM, OLIVE L[ILIAN].
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LINFORD, MADELINE [ALBERTA] (16 Jan 1895 – 16 Jun 1975)
1920s
Novelist and editor of the Guardian
women’s page for many years after it began in 1922, where her contributors
included Vera BRITTAIN, Leonora EYLES, Winifred HOLTBY and Evelyn SHARP. Author
of five novels. Bookman summed up Broken Bridges (1923): "Shows the
heroine standing with reluctant feet where the world and convent meet."
The others are The Roadside Fire
(1924), A Home and Children (1926),
Bread and Honey (1928), and Out of the Window (1930). She also
published a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft (1924). There's a tremendously
informative blog about Linford here. [Thank you to Michael Herbert for sharing this
with me.]
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LING, SHEILAH [MARY FRANCES] WARD (27
Feb 1928 – 20 Jul 1997)
(née Ward)
1960s, 1980s
Best known for her late girls' school story, Piggy (1980), set in a convent school, and a subsequent work of
children's fiction, Final Set
(1981), she also co-authored an earlier children's title, Angela Has Wings (1960), with her
husband, boys' writer Peter Ling, which qualifies her for this list. In the
1990s she published several volumes of religious non-fiction.
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LION, KATHLEEN CRIGHTON (4 Nov 1881 –
27 May 1957)
(née Symington, later married name Tomlinson)
1920s
Wife of actor Leon Marks Lion, and author of one play, The Wiles of the Widow: A Yorkshire Comedy in One Act (1911), and
one novel, The Ghost Moth (1923).
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Lipson, Edna
see CHARLES, GERDA
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LITTLE, MAUDE [AMELIA] (8 Oct 1886 - 1956)
(married name Deuchar, aka
Herbert Tremaine)
1910s – 1920s
Poet, playwright, and novelist under her own name and her pseudonym. She
published nine novels in all—At the
Sign of the Burning Bush (1910), A
Woman on the Threshold (1911), The
Children's Bread (1912), Those Who
Declined (1915), The Rose-Coloured
Room (1915), The Feet of the Young
Men (1917), about WWI, Two Months
(1919), The Tribal God (1921), and Bricks and Mortals (1924). Her WWI
play The Handmaidens of Death
(1919) was revived in recent years by the Southwark Playhouse in London.
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LITVINOV, IVY [THÉRÈSE] (4 Jun 1889 – 14 Apr 1977)
(née Low, aka Ivy Low)
1910s, 1930s, 1970s
Daughter of Alice HERBERT. Novelist and translator who lived in Russia and the Soviet
Union for most of her adult life. She published three novels in all. The
first two, Growing Pains (1913) and
The Questing Beast (1914),
published under her maiden name, were autobiographical, the first about her
girlhood, the second about a sexually-liberated Jewish woman writer. She
remains best known, however, for her one mystery novel, His Master's Voice (1930), which vividly evokes the Moscow of the
1920s, where she lived with her Russian husband and their children. Much
later, she published a story collection, She
Knew She Was Right (1971). Both of the latter books were reprinted by
Virago in the 1980s. She was also a translator from Russian to English for
many years, sometimes collaborating with her daughter Tatiana. She only moved
back to England in 1972.
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LIVESAY, JESSIE E[LIZABETH]. (9 May 1863 – 1 Oct 1938)
(née Chalmers)
1900s – 1910s
Author of four novels. The Shade of the
Acacia (1907), set in the realm of foxhunting, deals with a man’s love
for his best friend’s wife. The others are The Little Tin Gods (1901), Sons
of the Blood (1910), and Sink Red
Sun (1914).
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LIVINGSTON, MARJORIE (23 Feb 1893 - 1959)
(née Prout, aka Mark
Vinton)
1930s – 1940s
Author of eight novels, many of them with fantasy or supernatural themes.
Best known for her "Karmic Destiny" sequence—Island Sonata (1944), Muted
Strings (1946) and Delphic Echo
(1948)—which deals with Atlantis and reincarnation. Her other novels are The Future of Mr. Purdew (1936), about
the protagonist's afterlife, The Key of
the Castle (1937), The Loquacious
Vessel (1938, as Mark Vinton), A
Market for Idols (1939), and Moloch
(1942).
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LIVINGSTONE, PHYLLIS (5 Feb 1906 – 12 May 1983)
(full name
Livingstone-Learmonth, née Blake, other married name Faulkner, aka Naomi
Ludolf)
1930s - 1940
Stage actress and author of two novels. Under her pseudonym, which was also
her stage name, she published Loose
Covers (1931), while In Our
Metropolis (1940) appeared under her real name. Neglected Books went to
the British Library to read the first two chapters of the latter (see here) and discovered that it is set during the Phony
War and humorously follows the ups and downs of young married life. Livingstone
appears to have been born out of wedlock and at least partly raised by her
grandparents after her mother married a different man when Phyllis was 4.
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Lloyd, Joanna
see COGGIN, JOAN
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LLOYD, MARJORIE (4 Sept 1909 – 9 Feb 2001)
1950s – 1970s
Children's author known for her Fell Farm series, set in the Lake District
(and apparently based on High Arnside Farm, which now rents holiday cottages), comprised of Fell Farm Holiday (1951), Fell Farm for Christmas (1954), and Fell Farm Campers (1960). She
published one girls' school story, One
Summer Term (1959). Her other five titles are The Farm in Mallerstang (1956), The Family at Foxy Beck (1967), Patch the Puppy (1970), River
Trail (1970), and Fell Trek
(1973).
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LLOYD, NORA [KATHLEEN ELIZABETH] (22
Jun 1907 – 4 Oct 2003)
(née Patten, later married name Williams)
1930s – 1940s
Author of two novels and two children's titles. The Young May Moon (1935) describes the Irish
"troubles" of 1916-1917 through the eyes of a young girl. The Manchester Evening News said, "The
haunting beauty of the Ireland of other days fills this first novel with a
silvery light." Her second novel, Sea
Winds (1936), is about a teenage girl who accompanies her doctor father
to an isolated lighthouse island off of Ireland and creates complications for
the handful of keepers living there. Her children's titles are
adventure-themed—The Rescue Party
(1941) is about children dealing with intrigue in the West Indies, while The Young Liberators (1949) is,
according to a blurb, "about an Anglo-French family's wartime exploits
in the Savoy Alps." Lloyd was initially a challenge to identify, until I
came across a blog post here; the blogger mentioned having met her and that she
had written a novel about her aunt, one Alice Mary King, who was killed in
the Irish War of Independence. King is well documented and some poking around
on Ancestry led me straight to Lloyd.
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LOBB, FRANCES (16 Jan 1917 – 25 Jan 2013)
(pseudonym of Leila
Charlotte Evelyn Petronella Porter, married names Stevens and Buckley)
1940s, 1990s
Daughter of Rose Henniker HEATON. Translator and author of three novels—Handsome Johnnie (1941), The Strangers (1947), and The Vow (1999).
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LOCHERBIE-CAMERON, [MABEL] MARGARET (15 Jun 1902 – 29 Jul 1973)
(née Goff)
1940s – 1950s
Author of six girls' stories, some set in schools but most focused on mystery
elements. Titles are Nicolette Detects
(1949), Two and a Treasure Hunt
(1950), Will Madam Step This Way?
(1951), Nurse Kathleen: A Romance of
Hospital Life (1952), Nicolette
Finds Her (1953), and A Lion Among
Ladies (1955). Nicolette Detects,
in the words of Sims and Clare, "uses the dregs of Second World War spy
paranoia" in its tale of evil Nazis infiltrating a school. She was going
by "Locherbie-Goff" even before her marriage to one Alexander
Cameron, but the origins of the "Locherbie" are unclear.
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LOCHHEAD, MARION CLELAND (19 Apr 1902
– 19 Jan 1985)
1930s
Children's author, historian, biographer, poet, and author of five novels and
one story collection in the 1930s. The collection, Highland Scene (1939), is described as "romantic tales of
the Highlands and Islands of Scotland." Her novels are Anne Dalrymple (1934), Cloaked in Scarlet (1935), Adrian Was a Priest (1936), Island Destiny (1936), and The Dancing Flower (1938). After the
1930s, she focused primarily on histories, such as The Scots Household in the Eighteenth Century (1948) and A Lamp Was Lit: The Girls' Guildry Through
Fifty Years (1949), and on collected legends and tales for children.
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LOCKE, D[OROTHY]. M[ARY]. (16 Mar 1896 – 1971)
(née Crawforth Smith)
1940s
Author of a single novel, Two Ways Meet
(1942), described by a reviewer as a thriller set in Borneo.
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LOCKE, JANE (13 Jan 1905 - 1998)
1930s
Journalist and author of a single novel, Nothing
Ever Happens (1938), which focuses on office life, and many dozens of
short stories, most published by the Evening
News, but none of which seem to have been collected in book form.
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LOCKHART, LEONORA [CHARLOTTE MAUDE] (4
Jun 1881 – 15 Oct 1974)
(née Hutchason)
1920s
Author of a single novel, Fire of Life:
A Domestic Chronicle (1924), as well as various introductory reading and
basic English guides.
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LOCKWOOD, VERE (VERA) [IRENE] (6 Jun 1906
– 28 Feb 1968)
1920s – 1940s
Author of eighteen novels which appear to be adventures or thrillers set in
exotic locales, including Ramazan, the
Rajah (1929), Claws of Africa
(1930), London Lights (1932), A Persian Carpet (1933), Slave Market (1935), Forbidden Barter (1938), Orient Pearls (1939), Flaming Lanterns (1940), Passionate Pilgrimage (1943), and Veiled Wife (1945).
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LODGE, GRACE [BEATRICE] (6 Apr 1893 –
22 May 1975)
(married name Clifton-Shelton)
1940s – 1950s
Illustrator (including for several Enid BLYTON books) and children's author.
Titles include Three Friends and Chip
(1944), Lucy's Adventure (1945), Puddledock Farm (1947), The Hole in the Hedge (1948), The Marsh Princess (1949), and Misty and the Magic Necklace (1954).
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LODGE, M[ARGARET]. B[EATRICE]. (12 Dec 1888 – 3 Jan 1979)
1920s – 1930s
Daughter of historian Sir Richard Lodge. Author of one school story, Felicity at Fairliholm (1933), and two
other children's books, A Fairy To Stay
(1928) and The Wishing Wood
(1930), as well as a biography of her father (1946).
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LOFTS, NORAH [ETHEL] (27 Aug 1904 – 10 Sept 1983)
(née Robinson, later
married name Jorisch, aka Peter Curtis, Juliet Astley)
1930s – 1980s
Author of more than 50 novels, most of them historical in theme. Her
"Suffolk Trilogy," comprised of The
Town House (1959), The House at Old
Vine (1961), and The House at
Sunset (1962), focuses on a single house and its inhabitants across 500
years. Silver Nutmeg (1947) is set
during the 17th century spice trade, and The
Lute Player (1951) is about Richard I. Under her Peter Curtis pseudonym,
she published four crime thrillers—Dead
March in Three Keys (1940), You're
Best Alone (1943), Lady Living
Alone (1945), and The Devil's Own
(1960). Among her other titles were I
Met a Gypsy (1935), The Road to
Revelation (1941), Jassy
(1945), Bless This House (1954), Scent of Cloves (1957), How Far to Bethlehem? (1965), Lovers All Untrue (1970), Walk Into My Parlour (1975), Gad's Hall (1977), and Pargeters (1984). Several of her
books, including Jassy, You're Best Alone, and The Devil's Own, were turned into
films. I wrote about The Brittle Glass
(1942) here.
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Logan, Agnes
see ADAMS, AGNES
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Lombard, Nap
see JOHNSON, PAMELA HANSFORD
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LOMER,
E[THEL]. H[ADDEN]. (11 Apr 1898 – 26 Mar 1981)
(née Rowe, aka Caroline Rowe)
1930s, 1950s
Irish author
(born and raised in County Wicklow and educated at Queen's University,
Belfast) of six novels. Her first three—Barney's
Bend (1934), Look on the Fields
(1935), and The Grey Geese
(1936)—were published under her pseudonym and focus on rural life in Ireland.
After the war, she married an Englishman and moved to Hastings, publishing
three more novels under her own name—Glory
Down (1952), the "tragic story of five friends and the great cliff,
Glory Down, which eventually claimed two of them as its victims", Roxalla (1953), a psychological study
focused on two young boys and set in an Irish "big house", and For Flute and Piccolo (1955), focused
on the troubles of a family.
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LOMOND, ELIZABETH (dates unknown)
(pseudonym of Leonora Eyles???)
1930s
Author of one novel, I Have Been Young (1932). Contemporary
critics thought Lomond was an established novelist’s pseudonym, and comparing
the novel’s autobiographical content with what I know of the writers on my
list, the writer is almost certainly Leonora EYLES.
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LONDON, PHYLLIS (dates unknown)
1930s
Untraced author of a single title for girls, The Secrets of Devon Castle (1931), comprised of three stories,
one of them school-related.
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Long,
William Stuart
see FINLAY, VIOLET VIVIAN
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LONGFORD, CHRISTINE [PATTI] (1900 – 14 May 1980)
(née Trew, married name
Pakenham)
1930s
Novelist and
playwright. Author of four comic novels—Making
Conversation (1931, reprinted by Persephone), Country Places (1932), Jiggins
of Jigginstown (1933), and Printed
Cotton (1935). After the mid-1930s she devoted herself to a successful
career as a playwright. There's a thorough listing of her plays here. She later wrote a memoir which remains unpublished.
She was Lady Longford after her marriage and used the title as her pen name.
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LONGMAN, V. I. (dates unknown)
(pseudonym of a "Mrs. Vernon Deane")
1910s – 1930s
Author of two novels. Harvest
(1913) deals with a young woman, half English, half Indian, who is sent to
England following her father's death, and includes a section describing her
life at Oxford. Longman apparently didn't publish again for nearly two
decades, when That Little Candle
(1931) appeared, the story of a young man inspired by religious belief to
establish a "Friendship Club" "in the slums of
Westminster", which comes to a tragic end. This was apparently the
pseudonym of a Mrs. Vernon Deane, and The
Tatler refers to her as a member of a Le Toquet group of writers, but she
has not yet been traced beyond that.
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LONSDALE,
BERTHA (11 Jan 1910 – 7 May 1977)
1950s
BBC writer and
broadcaster and author of three children's titles—The Sanfields at Rockybeck (1951), Molly Hilton, Library Assistant (1954), and Molly Qualifies as a Librarian (1958), the latter two utilizing
her early experiences as a librarian. For the BBC, she adapted children's
titles including some by Violet NEEDHAM and Margot PARDOE. She reportedly
worked on an additional book, The
Sanfields Keep a Secret, a sequel to her debut, but it was never
published. She lived in Yorkshire.
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Lorac, ECR
see RIVETT, EDITH CAROLINE
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LORD, DOREEN MILDRED DOUGLAS (25 Sept 1904 – 6 May 1992)
(aka Doreen Ireland, aka
Doris Canham)
1920s – 1930s
Author of seven girls' school stories (some under each pseudonym)—Barbara—Called Binkie (1935), The Misfit (1936), Jill of Gateway School (1938), Doreen Douglas, Schoolgirl (1935), Lynette of Carisgate (1937), Joan at Seascale (1938), and Margery the Mystery (1938). She also
published several other works for children.
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LORIMER, NORMA [OCTAVIA] (31 Jul 1864
– 14 Feb 1948)
1890s – 1930s
Born in Scotland and raised on the Isle of Man, where two of her novels—Mirry-Ann (1900) and The Pagan Woman (1907)—are set, she
also wrote a series of fictional(?) travel narratives, such as By the Waters of Italy (1910) and By the Waters of Africa (1917). Other
fiction includes A Sweet Disorder
(1896), Catherine Sterling (1903),
apparently set in Japan, A Wife Out of
Egypt (1913), The God's Carnival
(1916), set in Italy, The Path of Love
(1921), The White Sanctuary (1924),
Moslem Jane (1929), and The Story of Isobel Lennox (1935).
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LORING, ELISABETH ANN (12 May 1904 - 1977)
1930s
Editor, under the name Elizabeth Ann, of the Sunday Dispatch and Modern
Weekly "Woman's Page,"
(see here
for more on that side of her career), Loring also published
three novels—Ladies' Paradise
(1933), Night After Bond Street
(1936), and Designs by Jo (1936).
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Lorraine, Anne
see CHISHOLM, LILIAN MARY
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Lorrimer,
Claire
see ROBINS, PATRICIA [DENISE]
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Lourie, Helen
see STORR, CATHERINE
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LOVE, MARGARET (dates unknown)
1950s – 1960s
Unidentified author of at least four children's books—All in an Afternoon! (1953), Clare
the Younger Sister (1954), An
Explorer for an Aunt (1960), and Four
Tickets to Adventure (1966). She had earlier written a one-act play for
women called Girdle Round the Earth
(1952), and appears to be the same author who published educational and
non-fiction works in later years.
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LOVE, SUSAN (dates unknown)
1920s
Untraced author of two short romances, The
Golden Chance (1923) and Fighting
Love (1924).
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LOVELL, DOROTHY ANN (?1880 - ?1952)
(uncertain identification)
1930s – 1950s
Children's author whose books were apparently quite popular, though some seem
to be for younger children. Titles include The Strange Adventures of Emma (1941), In the Land of the Thinsies (1944), about a girl who slips
through an escalator to a strange flat land, and Shadows on the Stairs (1946).
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LOVETT, MARGARET [ROSE] (30 Aug 1915 –
14 Jan 2006)
1940s, 1960s –
1970s
Schoolteacher and author of six children's books. The first three—An Adventure for Fivepence (1945), Family Pie (1947), and No Other Children (1949)—are holiday
stories. Sir Halmanac and the Crimson
Star (1965) and The Great and
Terrible Quest (1967) seem to have fairy tale qualities, while her final
book, Jonathan (1972), is about a
group of young orphan mill workers during the Industrial Revolution.
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LOVETT CAMERON, MRS (1844 – 4 Aug 1921)
(pseudonym of Caroline
Emily Cameron, née Sharp)
1870s – 1910s
Author of more than 40 novels described by OCEF as melodramatic. They go on: "Her practice is to
titillate the reader by approaching sexual sin and tragedy and then
retreating to romance." One of her most successful works was In a Grass Country (1885). Other
titles include Juliet's Guardian
(1877), A North Country Maid
(1884), A Devout Lover (1887), Proved Unworthy (1891), An Unselfish Woman (1894), Two Cousins and a Castle (1896), A Woman's No (1902), Rosomond Grant (1905), and Bitter Fruit (1914). Her
brother-in-law, Verney Lovett Cameron, was the author of adventure stories
for boys.
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LOW, ALICE ARMSTRONG (1885 - 1957)
(née Grant, aka Mrs. Cranston Low)
1930s
Scottish author of one novel, Langshaws
(1934).
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Low, Ivy
see LITVINOV, IVY
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LOWNDES, MARIE [ADELAIDE ELIZABETH RENÉE JULIA] BELLOC (5 Aug 1868 –
14 Nov 1947)
(aka Philip Curtin)
1900s – 1940s
Sister of Hilaire Belloc. Biographer, memoirist, and author of dozens of
novels. Starting out as a journalist, Lowndes became best known for her
romantic and mystery tales. Her most famous work is probably The Lodger (1913), about a couple who
come to suspect that their lodger may be Jack the Ripper, which became a
bestseller and was later made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock. Among her
other mysteries and thrillers are The
Chink in the Armour (1912), The
Terriford Mystery (1924), Thou
Shalt Not Kill (1927), The Chianti
Flask (1934), and Motive
(1938). Lowndes' personal life sounds almost as interesting as her
fiction—socializing as a girl with Constance and Oscar Wilde, maintaining
friendships with the likes of Henry James, Rhoda BROUGHTON, and Margot ASQUITH,
being president of the Women Writers' Suffrage League, and helping young
writers including Graham Greene, Margaret KENNEDY, and E. M. DELAFIELD. The
ODNB includes the tidbit that Ernest Hemingway became a fan of Lowndes' work
after a recommendation from Gertrude Stein. Late in life she published four
bestselling memoirs—I, Too, Have Lived
in Arcadia (1941), Where Love and
Friendship Dwelt (1943), The Merry
Wives of Westminster (1946), and A
Passing World (1948).
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LOWRY, [IRENE FRANCES] BRIDGET (21 Aug 1896 – 15 Nov 1982)
(née Pridden)
1930s
Author of five novels—Burden's End
(1930), The Losers (1932), A Stone for Sharpening (1934), I Carry the Wood (1939), and To-Morrow's Giants (1933), the last of
which is about a woman recovering from tragedy in an English village.
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LOY, MINA [GERTRUDE] (27 Dec 1882 – 25 Sept 1966)
(formerly Lowy, married
names Haweis and Lloyd)
1930s – 1940s
Though primarily
known as a major modernist poet, moving in the same Paris circles as James
Joyce and Gertrude Stein, Loy did write a single novel, Insel, in the 1930s and 1940s, which was only published in 1991.
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LUCAS, AUDREY (17 Mar 1898 - 1974)
(married names Scott and [?]Clarke-Smith)
1930s
Daughter of author E. V. Lucas and perhaps an inspiration for Evelyn Waugh
(see here). She published four novels—Double Turn (1935), Friendly
Relations (1936), Life Class
(1937), and Old Motley (1938)—as
well as a biography of her father, E.
V. Lucas: A Portrait (1939). She seems to have been going by Clarke-Smith
in 1943, but a marriage record has not been located and her presumed husband
was remarried in 1946.
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LUCAS, BARBARA (9 Oct 1911 – 8 Apr
2009)
(married name Wall, aka Barbara Wall)
1930s – 1970s
Mother of author Bernardine Bishop and author of at least nine novels, including
Stars Were Born (1934), The Trembling of the Sea (1936), which
deals with British communism, What Can
We Do? (1937), And Was Crucified
(1939), Anna Collett (1946), Growing Up (1956), Prelude to a Wedding (1964), More Ado About Nothing (1969), and Widows and Widowers (1979). She also
published, under her married name, a critical work, The Narrator's Voice: The Dilemma of Children's Literature
(1991), and a biography of Australian novelist Matilda Jane Evans (1994).
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Ludolf,
Naomi
see LIVINGSTONE, PHYLLIS
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LUNT, ALICE (5 Sept 1919 – 12 Apr 1973)
1950s – 1960s
Author of six children's titles. Three are school-related stories—Secret Stepmother (1959), Jeanette's First Term (1960), and Jeanette in the Summer Term
(1962)—based, according to Sims and Clare, on her own experiences teaching in
a secondary modern school. Tomorrow the
Harvest (1955) was based on her wartime experiences in the Land Army. Her
other two books were Eileen of Redstone
Farm (1964) and Mystery at Redstone
Farm (1970). She was also a close friend of Mabel Esther ALLAN.
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Lurgan, Lester
see WYNNE, MAY
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LUTYENS, [EDITH PENELOPE] MARY (31 Jul 1908 – 9 Apr 1999)
(married names Sewell and
Links, aka Esther Wyndham)
1930s – 1970s
Daughter of architect
Sir Edwin Lutyens and niece of Mary Constance Lutyens, later Mrs. George
WEMYSS. Author of biographies and more than two dozen novels, including ten
pseudonymous romances for Mills & Boon. Titles include Perchance to Dream (1935), Rose and Thorn (1936), Family Colouring (1940), Julie and the Narrow Valley (1947), Master of the Manor (1953), Once You Have Found Him (1954), Meeting in Venice (1956), and Cleo (1973). Her biographies include Millais and the Ruskins (1967) and a
3-volume bio of Krishnamurti (1983-90). Her memoir is To Be Young (1959).
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Lyall, David
see SWAN, ANNIE SHEPHERD
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LYLE, JANE (dates unknown)
1930s
Unidentified author of 9 romantic novels. Sparty
Lea (1934) is about a young woman who moves to a country cottage on the
strength of a small legacy. Chit for
Chat (1936) in particular seems to have garnered praise for its humor,
and To-Morrow and To-Morrow (1938)
was described as "a charming story of village life." Others are Three Times Round (1934), Full Measure (1935), Yours Respectably (1937), Nuts in May (1937), Together We Live (1938), and Such Ridiculous People (1940).
According to a 1938 review, the author was then living in Edinburgh, so she
could be Jane Allan Lyle née Peacock, 1858-1939, but there's no way to
establish it for sure, and it's also possible the name could be a pseudonym.
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LYNCH, PATRICIA [NORA] (4 Jun 1894 – 1
Sept 1972)
(married name Fox)
1920s – 1960s
Author of nearly 50 children's
titles. She had also been a journalist, and covered the 1916 Easter rising in
Ireland. She is best known for The
Turf-Cutter's Donkey (1935) and its several sequels, and for her Brogeen
series, both of which contain fantasy elements, some drawn from Ireland's
myths and legends. Other titles are The
Green Dragon (1925), The Cobbler's
Apprentice (1930), The Grey Goose
of Kilnevin (1939), The Mad O'Haras
(1948), The Bookshop on the Quay
(1956), about a country boy learning bookselling in Dublin, The Stone House at Kilgobbin (1959), The Golden Caddy (1962), and The Kerry Caravan (1967).
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LYND, SYLVIA (28 Sept 1888 – 21 Feb 1952)
1910s – 1920s
Poet, critic for Time and Tide, and
author of two novels, The Chorus: A
Tale of Love and Folly (1915) and The
Swallow Dive (1921), as well as a collection, The Mulberry Bush and Other Stories (1925).
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LYON, ELINOR (17 Aug 1921 – 28 May 2008)
(married name Wright)
1940s – 1970s
Author of more than 20 children’s books, many about the adventures of a group
of children in western Scotland, which she reportedly began writing in
reaction to Arthur Ransome's books, in which the children were
unrealistically good at everything they attempted. Titles include Hilary's Island (1949), The House in Hiding (1950), We Daren't Go a-Hunting (1951), Run Away Home (1953), Sea Treasure (1955), Daughters of Aradale (1957), Cathie Runs Wild (1960), Green Grow the Rushes (1964), The Day That Got Lost (1968), The Wishing Pool (1970), and The Floodmakers (1976). Fidra Books
reprinted several of her books, and also released her previously unpublished The Shores of Darkness (2009).
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Someone else for your list! I found A Letter to Elizabeth by Bettina Linn at the weekend - 1957. She seems to have written a handful of novels.
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