|
JACBERNS,
RAYMOND (1866 – 29 Jun 1911)
(pseudonym of Georgiana Mary Isabel Ash)
1890s – 1910s
Author of nearly 40 works for children, including an array of early girls'
school stories which are, according to Sims & Clare, "required
reading for the historian of girls' school stories." Jacberns was
perhaps the first author to write a proper series of school stories. Works
include Common Chords (1897), A Handful of Rebels (1901), The New Pupil (1902), A School Champion (1904, recently
reprinted by Books to Treasure), Crab
Cottage (1905), The Truant Five
(1907), The Attic Boarders (1909), An Uncomfortable Term (1911), Tabitha Smallways, Schoolgirl (1912),
and Robin (1915).
|
|
Jackson,
Elaine
see FREEMAN, GILLIAN
|
|
JACKSON, L[YDIA]. REVE (dates
unknown)
1930s
Untraced author of a single novel, Lottery
Luck (1938).
|
|
JACOB, NAOMI [ELEANOR CLARE] (1
Jul 1884 – 27 Aug 1964)
(aka Ellington Gray, aka Naomi Ellington Jacob)
1920s – 1960s
Novelist, actress, and memoirist. She performed in
vaudeville before World War I, and later acted in films. Her debut novel, Jacob Ussher (1925), was a bestseller,
but she became best known for her series of novels about the Jewish Gollantz
family, in particular Four Generations
(1934). She published more than 50 novels in all, veering more towards
romance late in her career. She also published an array of memoirs, beginning
with Me—a Chronicle about Other People
(1933) and including Me—In War-Time
(1940) and Me—and the Swans (1963),
the latter about her friendship with Radclyffe HALL and Una Troubridge.
|
|
JACOB, VIOLET [AUGUSTA MARY
FREDERICKA] (1 Sept 1863 – 9 Sept 1946)
(née Kennedy-Erskine)
1900s – 1920s
Poet and novelist whose tales of rural Wales and Scotland were highly praised
in her day. Her five novels are The
Sheepstealers (1902), The
Interloper (1904), Irresolute
Catherine (1908), The History of
Aythan Waring (1908), and Flemington
(1911). She also published several story collections, and a compilation of
her late stories, The Lum Hat and Other
Stories: Last Tales of Violet Jacob, appeared in 1982. Her Diaries and Letters from India, 1895-1900
were published in 1990. Jacob stopped writing following her son’s death in
World War I.
|
|
JACOMB, AGNES E[LIZA]. (10 Aug
1866 – 12 Aug 1949)
(pseudonym of Agnes Eliza Jacomb Hood)
1900s – 1910s
Journalist and author of five novels—The Faith of His Fathers (1909), Johnny Lewison (1909), The Lonely Road (1911), Esther (1912) and The Fruits of the Morrow (1914).
|
|
JAEGER, MURIEL (23 May 1892 – 21
Nov 1969)
1920s – 1930s
Oxford friend of Dorothy L. SAYERS and Winifred HOLTBY. Author of historical
and biographical non-fiction, as well as four novels, three of them early
examples of science-fiction. The
Question Mark (1926) is about a utopian future and may have influenced
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The Man with Six Senses (1927) is a
romantic novel incorporating ESP, which was reprinted in 2013. Retreat From Armageddon (1936) is only
mildly futuristic in predicting World War II, but includes philosophizing
about genetic engineering. Her third novel, Hermes Speaks (1933), seems more political in theme, about a
world guided by a false prophet. Among her non-fiction is Experimental Lives: From Cato to George
Sand (1932) and Before Victoria: A
Study of English Social Life (1956). She also wrote one play, The Sanderson Soviet (1934). Jaeger
was apparently the main source of encouragement to Sayers to write her first
Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, in return for which she was its dedicatee.
|
|
JAFFÉ, [PHYLLIS] APRIL (1927 –
28 Oct 2019)
(married name Sebag-Montefiore)
1940s – 1950s
Author of three works of fiction. Satin and Silk (1948) and The Enchanted Horse (1953) are pony
stories (see here for a bit more information), the
former reportedly written during school holidays when the author was only 14.
Portrait Unfinished (1954) is a
novel for adults, about the two daughters of a doctor, one of whom is led to
unhappiness and finally tragedy by her beauty. It perhaps contains
autobiographical elements, as a review points out that the author herself was
the daughter, wife, and sister of doctors.
|
|
JAMES,
GRACE (11 Nov 1882 – 6 Feb 1965)
1930s – 1960s
Playwright, folklorist, and
children's author, known for her classic anthology Japanese Fairy Tales (1910), and for her "John and
Mary" series of children's books, beginning with John and Mary (1935) and extending through 19 more volumes to John and Mary Revisit Rome (1963). Japan: Recollections and Impressions
(1936) is a memoir of her youth in Japan.
|
|
JAMES, LYDIA (dates unknown)
1930s
Author of two historical novels. His
Sixth Wife (1930) was the “story of Henry VIII's sixth attempt at a
successful marriage with a lady who had four husbands. … The book is a
sensational novel of intrigue, love, hate, malice, greed, ambition,
espionage, and torture." (All that in 223 pages!) The Downward Path
(1931) was a “tragic and joyous historical tale of the time of Edward II.”
|
|
JAMES, NORAH C[ORDNER]. (22 Sept
1901 – 19 Nov 1979)
1920s – 1970s
Author of nearly sixty novels, in which, according to Contemporary Authors, "sexual and romantic matters were
dealt with frankly yet tenderly, and in which women's issues were portrayed
from a feminist perspective." James came to fame when her debut novel, Sleeveless Errand (1929), was
banned in Britain but became a bestseller nonetheless. That novel follows a
suicidal bohemian through the sexual fringes of London, and earned some
enthusiastic reviews alongside the scandalized ones. Among her many other
works are Jealousy (1933), The Stars Are Fire (1937), The Gentlewoman (1940), Enduring Adventure (1944), set during
the Blitz, The Father (1946), Pay the Piper (1950), The Shadow Between (1959), Small Hotel (1965), The Bewildered Heart (1973), and Love (1975). With her partner Barbara
BEAUCHAMP she also published a cookbook, Greenfingers
and the Gourmet (1949).
|
|
JAMES, PAULINE M[EGAN]. (29 Sept
1926 – 10 Mar 2011)
(married name Whibley, aka Polly Whibley)
1950s
Author of two girls' school stories—The
Island Mystery (1950) and Challenge
to Caroline (1952)—and, according to Sims & Clare, three other girls'
stories, which I was unable to locate. She also wrote The Heights of Heidelberg (2011), published by the Elsie J.
OXENHAM Society.
|
|
JAMESON, [MARGARET] STORM (8 Jan 1891 – 30 Sept 1986)
(married names Clarke and
Chapman, aka William Lamb, aka James Hill)
1910s – 1970s
Author of more than 50 novels, Jameson's fiction was often politically
engaged and varied widely in style. Her first novel was The Pot Boils (1919), but she reached a wider audience with her Triumph of Time trilogy—The Lovely Ship (1927), The Voyage Home (1930), and A Richer Dust (1931)—set in her native
Whitby from the mid-1800s to the 1920s. Much of Jameson's work is at least
partly concerned with war and its causes, including Three Kingdoms (1926) and Farewell
to Youth (1928), as well as her second trilogy, Mirror in Darkness, comprised of Company Parade (1934), Love
in Winter (1935), and None Turn
Back (1936). With the approach of World War II, her work focused more
overtly on current events. In the
Second Year (1936) is a distopian novel about a Fascist takeover of
England. Cousin Honoré (1940)
attempts to examine the causes of the war via the microcosm of a village in Alsace.
Europe to Let: The Memoirs of an
Obscure Man (1940) is a collection of novellas about the rise of Fascism.
The Fort (1941) used the form of a
Greek drama in a tale of French and English soldiers trapped in a cellar as
the Nazis approach. Cloudless May
(1943) examines the capitulation of France, while The Journal of Mary Hervey Russell (1945) is a more personal,
fictionalized diary, often considered among Jameson's best work. Jameson's
later work The Green Man (1952) was
an epic war novel and a bestseller, tracing nearly two decades of the leadup
to the war and the war itself. Jameson also wrote several passionate works of
non-fiction about war, and her acclaimed memoir, Journey from the North (1969), includes some reflections on both
wars as well. Her final novel was There
Will Be a Short Interval (1973).
|
|
JANES, KATHLEEN F[LORENCE]. (15 Sept 1903 – 11 May
1992)
(married name
Jamieson)
1950s – 1970s
Author of around a dozen romantic novels, including
Rustle of Spring (1957), Dance Caprice (1958), A Dream in Venice (1962), Witch's Gold (1963), A Time of Lilies (1967), and The Sycamore Girl (1971). Janes was a
pianist and music teacher in Oxford, and music forms the backdrop of some of
her novels.
|
|
Jardine,
Rupert
see
MARSH, EILEEN
|
|
JARVIS,
MARY ROWLES (1853 – 7 May 1929)
(née Rowles)
1890s – 1920s
Children's author and writer of devotional poetry and hymns. Fiction includes
The Sliding Panel, or, The Miser of
Raynham Farm (1890), The Rescue on
Tempest Reef (1896), Three Girls and
a Garden and Other Stories (1912), The
Treasure Finders: A Forest Story (1912), Colin Courageous (1914), and Pleasing
Stories (1916).
|
|
JEANS, ANGELA (29 Nov 1899 – 27
Jan 1994)
(pseudonym of Violet Esmé Watt, née Holl)
1930s – 1950s, 1970s
Wife of BBC producer & broadcaster John Watt,
of whom she wrote a biography, The Man
Who Was My Husband (1964). Author of more than a dozen works of fiction,
including children's books such as Harry
the Peke (1936), Mr Periwinkle (1942),
Miss Periwinkle (1950), and Minerva: The Story of an Owl (1956).
In the 1930s–1950s, she published six novels for adults—So Young, So Wise (1936), The
Field Beyond (1938), Blessings on
Otto (1940), Condemned to Life
(1949), Lath and Plaster (1952),
which I reviewed here, and For Worse (1954)—then fell silent
until the 1970s when she published three more novels with lesbian themes—Image of Joy (1970), A Kind of Death (1976), and To Cherish a Dream (1976). After the
war, she and her husband renovated a property in Essex, which may have been
the background for Lath and Plaster.
|
|
JEANS, MARJORIE (17 Jun 1889 –
12 Sept 1978)
(pseudonym of Margaret Evelyn Wise, married name Jeans)
1930s
Author of three novels. The Split Face
(1932) is about "Bohemian life in London," according to a publisher
blurb, but other details are lacking. The
Clown and Mrs Fellows (1936) deals with an elderly woman's memories of
her life as she is struggling to escape a boarding-house fire. And For Ever and Ever (1938) features only
two characters, a man and his wife, as his mental health deteriorates.
|
|
JENKINS, [MARGARET] ELIZABETH
[HEALD] (31 Oct 1905 – 5 Sept 2010)
(née Heald)
1920s – 1990s
Biographer and author of twelve novels, most
famously The Tortoise and the Hare
(1954), one of Virago's most passionately advocated reprints. The earlier Harriet (1934), based on a real-life
crime, was reprinted by Persephone. Her other novels are Virginia Water (1929), The
Winters (1931), Portrait of an
Actor (1933), Doubtful Joy
(1935), The Phoenix' Nest (1936), Young Enthusiasts (1947), Brightness
(1963), Honey (1968), Dr. Gully (1972), and A Silent Joy (1992). She published
several acclaimed biographies, including of Jane Austen (1938), Henry
Fielding (1947), and Elizabeth I (1958), other works of non-fiction including
The Princes in the Tower (1978) and
The Shadow and the Light: A Defense of
the Medium, Daniel Douglas Home (1982), and one children's book, Joseph Lister (1960). When she was
already approaching 100 years of age, she published her memoir, The View from Downshire Hill (2004).
|
|
JENNINGS, AUDREY (19 Aug 1890 –
18 Nov 1984)
1930s
Author of a single novel, Storied Urn
(1933), of which the Spectator
said: "Miss Jennings tells the story, common enough in
eighteenth-century comedy, of the rival lovers and the unsophisticated
heroine: but she treats it with a depth and sympathy of her own." She
was apparently a secretary at the Society of Genealogists. There was an
artist of the same name active in the 1950s and 1960s, but I don't have
enough information to link them with certainty.
|
|
JEPSON,
MARGARET (8 Mar 1903 – 1 Nov 2003)
(married name
Birkinshaw, aka Pearl Bellairs)
1930s – 1940s
Daughter of author Edgar Alfred Jepson, sister of crime novelist Selwyn
Jepson, and mother of novelist Fay Weldon. Author of seven novels, some of
which appear to be thrillers. Titles are Miss
Amagee in Africa (1932), Via Panama
(1934), Velvet and Steel (1935), The Cups of Alexander (1937), Murderess? (1946), Her Destiny (1948), and Love Spurned (1948).
|
|
JERROLD, IANTHE [BRIDGMAN] (9
Dec 1898 – 31 May 1977)
(married name Menges, aka Geraldine Bridgman)
1920s – 1960s
Author of more than 20 novels, including mysteries and romance. She was a
member of the famous Detection Club, and her mysteries—two under her own
name, The Studio Crime (1929) and Dead Man’s Quarry (1930), and two more
under her pseudonym, Let Him Lie
(1940) and There May Be Danger
(1948)—have been reprinted by Dean Street Press. Her other fiction includes Young Richard Mast: A Study of Temperament
(1923), Seaside Comedy (1934), The Dogs Do Bark (1936), The Stones Await Us (1945), The Coming of Age (1950), Love and the Dark Crystal (1955), My Angel (1960), and My Twin and I (1966).
|
|
JESSE, F[RYNIWYD]. TENNYSON (1
Mar 1888 – 6 Aug 1958)
(pseudonym of Wynifried Margaret Jesse, married name Harwood, aka Beamish
Tinker)
1910s – 1950s
Playwright, journalist, historian, criminologist, and author of fourteen
volumes of fiction, including three story collections. She was one of the few
women war correspondents on the Belgian front during World War I, and
published The Sword of Deborah
(1919) about the women's army in France. She published numerous works of
non-fiction about well-known crimes and trials, and some of her fiction is
also focused on crime. Her most famous novels are The Lacquer Lady (1929), about a young woman at the Burmese Royal
Palace, and A Pin to See the Peepshow
(1934), about a famous murder case, both reprinted by Virago in the 1980s,
and Pin is now available in the British Library Women Writers series.
Her other novels are The Milky Way
(1913), The Man Who Stayed at Home
(1915, as Beamish Tinker), Secret Bread
(1917), The White Riband, or, A Young
Female's Folly (1921), Tom Fool
(1926), Moonraker, or, The Female
Pirate and Her Friends (1927), Act
of God (1937), The Alabaster Cup
(1950), and The Dragon in the Heart
(1956). Her collections are Beggars on
Horseback (1915), Many Latitudes
(1928), and The Solange Stories
(1931). Early in World War II, Jesse and husband Harold Harwood collected
their letters to friends in the U.S. and published them in two volumes, London Front (1940) and While London Burns (1942). Also in
1942, Jesse wrote an account of the courageous salvage of a tanker set on
fire by Germans, called The Saga of the
San Demetrio (1942). This was later made into a film. Sabi
Pas, or, I Don't Know
(1935) is subtitled "reminiscences" in the British Library
catalogue, but I've found no details about it. Jesse was a great niece of
Alfred Tennyson—her grandmother, Tennyson's sister, was engaged to A. H.
Hallam at the time of his death. She was the sister of Stella Mary JESSE.
|
|
JESSE, STELLA MARY (6 Jan 1887 –
17 Jun 1942)
(married name Simson, aka Jane Starr, aka Stella Simson?)
1920s
Sister of F. Tennyson JESSE and author of Eve
in Egypt (1929), a light-hearted novel about a young woman traveling in
Egypt to escape marriage proposals from two different men. Michael Walmer
reprinted the novel, and I reviewed it here. Jesse's Times obituary says
she also wrote novels as Stella Simson, but if so no trace of them seems to
remain.
|
|
JOAN, NATALIE (12 Feb 1886 – 7
Apr 1956)
(pseudonym of Natalie Joan Engleheart, née Davy)
1910s – 1930s
Founder of Moffats prep school and author of
fiction and poetry for very young and for older children, including such
works as The Hunter Children
(1922), Jess of Top Farm (1924), The Forest Children (1927), and Three for Luck (1935), as well as two
titles in the Ameliaranne series created by Constance HEWARD.
|
|
JOCELYN, FANNY
(dates unknown)
(pseudonym of ????)
1930s
Unidentified author of a single novel, And
the Stars Laughed (1937), about a pacifist in World War I. She also
co-wrote a play, Come Out to Play
(1938), with John Sand. There are some general clues to her identity—she
worked as a journalist in London, lived for a time in Russia as a little girl
just before and in the early days of WWI, was eighteen years old when she
started writing her novel, and was living in Willesden when it appeared about
ten years later. A review which provides many of these details notes that her
name is a pseudonym, but sadly doesn't provide a hint of her real name.
|
|
JOHN,
KATHERINE (8 Apr 1906 – 21 Mar 1984)
(née Gower)
1930s
Critic, translator from Scandinavian languages into English, and author, with
her husband Romilly John, of a single well-received mystery novel, Death by Request (1933), about a house
guest gassed in their room, reprinted by Hogarth Crime in the 1980s. I wrote
a bit about it here.
|
|
JOHNS,
[HELEN] ROSEMARY (1921 - ????)
(née Haslam, later married name Murdoch)
1950s – 1960s
Author of four novels—The Virgin and
the Scales (1958), Witch Willow
(1960), Echo from the Past (1961), and
The Brighter Star (1962). Witch Willow is a romance about a
young woman who goes on a television quiz show, choosing witchcraft as her
area of expertise, only to wonder if she may be at risk from real-life
witches.
|
|
JOHNSON,
[ANNA] DOROTHY [PHILIPPA] (13 May 1890 – 2 Feb 1954)
1920s – 1930s
Author of four novels. Doris (1925), set partly in a girl’s school, is
about a tomboy-ish schoolgirl and her parental difficulties. To Meet Mr. Stanley (1926), on the
other hand, is set at a boys’ suburban preparatory school, with a romance
between a school assistant and one of the masters. With The Death of a Spinster (1931), about the dark secrets in the
life of its elderly victim, Johnson switched into the mystery genre, with some
success judging by strong reviews. Private
Inquiries (1932) is about a young man setting up is own detective agency,
with surprising and perhaps—according to reviews—implausible results.
|
|
JOHNSON, PAMELA [HELEN] HANSFORD
(29 May 1912 – 18 Jun 1981)
(married names Stewart and Snow, aka Nap Lombard [with Gordon Neil
Stewart])
1930s – 1980s
Playwright and author of more than 30 novels, of which The Unspeakable Skipton (1959), based
on the life of the infamous Baron Corvo, is often regarded as her best. Her
debut, This Bed Thy Centre (1935),
was a controversial success about a young couple's sexual frustration as the
result of a long engagement. Winter
Quarters (1943) focuses on an army battery stationed in a small English
village during World War II. She co-wrote two pseudonymous mysteries with her
first husband—Tidy Death (1940) and
Murder's a Swine (1943, aka The Grinning Pig)—featuring husband
and wife amateur detectives. Among her other titles are World's End (1937), The
Family Pattern (1942), An Avenue of
Stone (1947), Catherine Carter
(1952), An Error of Judgement
(1962), The Survival of the Fittest
(1968), and A Bonfire (1981).
According to her ODNB entry, she
nearly married poet Dylan Thomas in the mid-1930s. Instead, she later married
novelist C. P. Snow.
|
|
JOHNSON, ZOë [GREY] (24 Apr 1914 – 19 Oct 1992)
(née Turner)
1930s
Author of two mystery novels. At the Sign of the Clove and Hoof (1937)
deals with murders in a zany English village worthy of early Gladys Mitchell
or Edmund Crispin. Mourning After (1938) has tensions arising from a
wealthy old man's will, which leaves everything to his children unless
there's any suspicion of foul play, in which case it goes to a cousin. Said
cousin shows up on the scene, of course... The first of her books was
reprinted by Moonstone Press in 2023.
|
|
JOHNSTON, MARJORIE SCOTT (21 Oct
1904 – 29 Dec 1984)
(pseudonym of Florence Mary Marjorie Milsom, née Johnston)
1930s – 1940s
Author of three novels. The Mountain
Speaks (1938) is about a young woman running away from an unhappy love
affair to an isolated Alpine village. A blurb from the Daily Telegraph called Pilgrim
and the Phoenix (1940) "[o]ne of the most absorbing novels produced
by the war," but gave no indication of its plot. And The Ghost in Galoshes (1941) follows a
young woman through the ups and downs of work in Fleet Street, publishing,
and the BBC. Johnston was an enthusiastic Alpine climber and worked for a
time with the Woolfs at the Hogarth Press.
|
|
JOHNSTON, MYRTLE (7 Mar 1909 –
25 Nov 1955)
1920s - 1950
Author of six novels of dark psychological drama—Hanging Johnny (1927), about "a misunderstood
executioner," Relentless
(1930), The Maiden (1932), The Rising (1939), Amiel (1941), about the horrors of
war, and A Robin Redbreast in a Cage
(1950), about an acquitted murderer.
|
|
JOHNSTONE, NANCY J[OAN]. (1906 -
????)
(née Thomas-Peter, later married name Caron)
1940s
Author of a single novel, Temperate Zone (1941), a humorous look at Brits and Americans in
Mexico. She also wrote three memoir/travel titles—Hotel in Spain (1937), about she and her husband opening a hotel
in a Spanish coastal village, Hotel in
Flight (1939), about their subsequent adventures during the Spanish Civil
War and their efforts to get 60 children safely to the French border, and Sombreros Are Becoming (1941), about
their opening of a new hotel in Mexico. She and her husband split by the late
1940s and she remarried in Guatemala. The last sighting of her in public
records is traveling to Russia in 1950 or 1951.
|
|
JOHNSTON,
PRISCILLA (16 Sept 1910 – 12 Apr 1984)
(married names
Gill and Roworth)
1930s – 1940s
Daughter of calligrapher Edward Johnston, known for his lettering for the
London Tube, and author of five novels, including The Narrow World (1930), set in a girls' school, and its sequel, Green Girl (1931), as well as That Summer (1933), Burnt Mallow (1936) and The Sound of Flutes (1947). Johnston
married her own godfather, who was 26 years her senior, only to see him die
of cancer in less than a year. You can read more about their relationship here.
|
|
JOHNSTONE, VICKI (dates unknown)
1940s
Untraced author of a single girls' school story, The Phantom Family (1948).
|
|
JOLY,
MRS. JOHN SWIFT (17 Jun 1876 – 14 Jan 1946)
(pseudonym of Mary
Totenham Joly, née Fitzpatrick)
1910s
Irish author of a single novel, Those—Dash—Amateurs
(1918), a humorous look at “a group of titled ladies who go to do their bit
in a military hospital at Boulogne.”
|
|
JONES, ADA ELIZABETH (30 Jun
1886 – 20 Jan 1962)
(married name Chesterton, aka John Keith Prothero, aka Anne Page, aka
Mrs. Cecil Chesterton)
1910s – 1940s
Sister-in-law of G. K. Chesterton, best known for her journalism about slum
life, such as In Darkest London
(1926). She published seven novels, most using her Prothero pseudonym—Motley & Tinsel: A Story of the Stage
(1911), An Eye for an Eye (1917), A Prince of Vagabonds (1932), With Links of Steel (1932), Diamond Cut Diamond (1932), What Price Youth? (1939), and Pearl Beyond Price (1947). She also
published poetry and travel writing, and co-wrote two plays. She was the
founder of Cecil Houses for homeless women.
|
|
Jones, Annabel
see BRAND, CHRISTIANNA
|
|
JONES, E[MILY]. B[EATRICE]. C[OURSOLLES].
(15 Apr 1893 – 30 Jun 1966)
(married name Lucas)
1920s – 1930s
Friend of some of the major literary and artistic figures of her day,
including Romer WILSON, Rosamond LEHMANN, and Dorothy RICHARDON, and author
of six novels. Her debut, Quiet
Interior (1920), was praised by Katherine Mansfield, while Cyril Connolly
described Helen and Felicia (1927),
about two sisters and the complications when one of them marries, as a
"moving and conscientious study of fondness written with sobriety and
grace." According to Sharon Ouditt, The
Singing Captives (1922) is "concerned with the impact of war and the
postwar world on a well-to-do family." The Wedgwood Medallion (1923) focuses on family life and troubled
love, but Ouditt notes of it, "Stability, propriety and tradition are
set against breakdown and pretence in a world struggling with the impact of
war and modernity." Inigo Sandys
(1924) is set in postwar Cambridge. Her final novel, Morning and Cloud (1932), about a troubled romance, nearly didn't
find a publisher, but artist Dora Carrington was an admirer. She also published
As I Remember: An Autobiographical
Ramble (1922).
|
|
JOPE-SLADE,
CHRISTINE (CHRISTIANA) [VERNON] (1891 – 5 Jan 1942)
(married name
Clark)
1910s – 1950s
Author of at least 20 novels, many of which sound like romances. My favorite
title is The Little Girl Who Kept
Fairies (1924). Others include Letters
to My Unborn Son (1917), The Bread
and Butter Marriage (1920), The
Cuckoo's Nest (1922), The Madonna
of the Clutching Hands (1927), Ice
Cold Marriage (1932), and The
Enchanted Swan (1952).
|
|
Joyce, L. E. Elliott
see ELLIOTT, LILIAN ELWYN
|
|
JUDD, A[LICIA]. M[ARIA]. (22 Apr 1851 – 1 Nov 1929)
1890s – 1910s
London author about whom little is known apart from the titles of her six
novels—A Daughter of Lilith (1899),
Pharoah's Turquoise (1906), For a Woman's Memory (1908), A Soul's Burden (1911), Lot's Wife (1913), and The White Vampire (1914)—which
presumably lean toward the supernatural?
|
|
JULIAN, MARY (dates unknown)
1910s – 1920s
Unidentified author of two novels—Where Jasmines Bloom (1917) and Ann (1922). Children's author Joan
Mary Wayne BROWN used this pseudonym for two novels in the 1930s, but as she
was born in 1906, she couldn't have been the author of the two earlier
titles.
|
|
Julian, Mary
see also BROWN, JOAN MARY
WAYNE
|
|
KAMM, JOSEPHINE (30 Dec 1905 –
31 Aug 1989)
(née Hart)
1930s – 1970s
Novelist, historian, biographer, and children's author, best known for her
pioneering young adult novels, including Out
of Step (1962), about an interracial teen couple in London, and Young Mother (1965), about a pregnant teen.
Kamm began her career with five adult novels—All Quiet at Home (1936), Disorderly
Caravan (1938), Nettles to My Head
(1939, reviewed here), Peace, Perfect Peace
(1947), and Come, Draw This Curtain
(1948). I reviewed Peace, Perfect Peace
here and it was reprinted as a Furrowed Middlebrow book by Dean Street
Press in 2019. She also wrote two girls' career stories, Janet Carr, Journalist (1953) and Student Almoner (1955), as well as Daughter of the Desert (1956), a biography of Gertrude Bell, How Different from Us: A Biography of Miss
Buss and Miss Beale (1958), Hope
Deferred: Girls' Education in English History (1965), and Rapiers and Battleaxes: The Women's
Movement and Its Aftermath (1966).
|
|
Kane,
Julia
see ROBINS, DENISE NAOMI
|
|
Karlova, Irina
see CLAMP, HELEN MARY
ELIZABETH
|
|
KAVAN, ANNA (10 Apr 1901 – 5 Dec
1968)
(pseudonym of Helen Emily Woods, married names Ferguson and Edmonds,
aka Helen Ferguson)
1920s – 1960s
A troubled
writer who faced drug addiction and mental health issues. She published her
first six novels—A Charmed Circle
(1929), Let Me Alone (1930), The Dark Sisters (1930), A Stranger Still (1935), Goose Cross (1936), and Rich Get Rich (1937)—under her first
married name, a kind of pseudonym since by that time she had already married
again. Following one of several suicide attempts and a stint in rehab, she
created a new persona named after a character in two of her earlier novels,
and thereafter wrote entirely under the name Anna Kavan. From that point, her
work became more experimental and gradually evolved into science-fiction. Asylum Piece (1940) and Sleep Has His House (1948) deal with
themes of insanity. Other titles are I
Am Lazarus (1945), The Horse's Tale
(1949), Who Are You? (1963), and Ice (1967). Since her death, several
previously unpublished novels have come to light, including Mercury (1994), The Parson (1997), and Guilty
(2007).
|
|
KAY, ANNE (dates unknown)
1930s
Untraced author of a single girls' school story, Girls of Deepdene (1937).
|
|
KAYE,
BARBARA (4 Aug 1908 – 21 Feb 1998)
(pseudonym of
Barbara Kenrick Muir, née Gowing—not to be confused with romance writer
Barbara Kaye, born 1934, or with Marie MUIR, who apparently also wrote under
the pseudonym Barbara Kaye)
1940s – 1970s
Wife of bookseller Percy Muir. She recorded their life together in two
memoirs, The Company We Kept (1986)
and Second Impression (1995). She
also published more than 20 novels. Titles include Call It Kindness (1942), Home
Fires Burning (1943), Pleasant
Burden (1947), Black Market Green
(1950), Festival at Froke (1951), Rebellion on the Green (1953), Neighbourly Relations (1954), and Minus Two (1961). She also published Live and Learn: The Story of Denham
College, 1948-1969 (1970). Thanks to John Heap at the British Library for
additional information regarding this author.
|
|
Kaye, Barbara (different from the above)
see MUIR, MARIE
|
|
KAYE,
M[ARY]. M[ARGARET]. (21 Aug 1908 – 29 Jan 2004)
(married name
Hamilton, aka Mollie Hamilton, aka Mollie Kaye)
1930s – 1980s
Children's author, memoirist, and bestselling novelist, best known for The Far Pavilions (1978), an epic of
the British Raj. Other novels include Six
Bars at Seven (1940), Shadow of the
Moon (1957, revised 1979), and Trade
Wind (1963, revised 1981). She also published a series of mysteries set
in exotic locales where she and her military husband were stationed, which
were reprinted in revised editions in the 1980s. These include Death Walked in Kashmir (1953,
reprinted as Death in Kashmir), Death Walked in Berlin (1955,
reprinted as Death in Berlin), Death Walked in Cyprus (1956,
reprinted as Death in Cyprus), Later Than You Think (1958, reprinted
as Death in Kenya), The House of Shade (1959, reprinted as
Death in Zanzibar), and Night on the Island (1960, reprinted
as Death in the Andamans). Her
early children's fiction appeared under the name Mollie Kaye. Her memoirs,
which include her childhood and early married life in India, are The Sun in the Morning (1990), Golden Afternoon (1997), and Enchanted Evening (1999).
|
|
KAYE-SMITH, [EMILY] SHEILA (4
Feb 1887 – 14 Jan 1956)
(married name Fry)
1900s – 1950s
Author of more than three dozen works of fiction, including novels of rural
life in Sussex and Kent, infused with her Christian faith, which may have
formed part of the inspiration for Stella GIBBONS's satire of such fiction in
Cold Comfort Farm. Titles include The Tramping Methodist (1908), The Three Furlongers (1914), Sussex Gorse (1916), Green Apple Harvest (1920), Joanna Godden (1922), A Wedding Morn (1928), The Village Doctor (1929), The History of Susan Spray, the Female
Preacher (1931), Gallybird
(1934), The Valiant Woman (1939), Tambourine Trumpet and Drum (1943), The Lardners and the Laurelwoods
(1948), and The View from the Parsonage
(1954). Her memoirs are Three Ways Home
(1937), Kitchen Fugue (1945), which
takes in her experiences living in "Bomb Alley" in Sussex during
World War II, and All the Books of My
Life (1956).
|
|
KAZARINE, VIOLET [CONSTANCE] (1891 – 6 Jun 1947)
(née White, later married name Butler)
1920s
Author of two novels, Poor Fish (1927) and Five
Sisters (1930). Violet married a Russian in 1920 and became a Russian
citizen, but her British citizenship was reinstated in 1929, presumably
following a breakdown of the marriage. These facts might be relevant to a
review of Poor Fish, which notes
that it's about just such a marriage and sums up, "The man is a
thoroughly lazy, immoral, and incompetent creature, and how a girl could be
such a fool as to marry him and stick to him through everything, knowing what
he was, seems incomprehensible." Five
Sisters follows the five
daughters of a Brigadier-General and “the ironic comedy and tragedy of the
world they make for themselves.”
|
|
KEANE, MOLLY (MARY) [NESTA] (20
Jul 1904 – 22 Apr 1996)
(née Skrine, aka M. J. Farrell)
1920s – 1950s, 1980s
Author of fourteen novels in all, eleven of them, early in her career, under
the pseudonym M. J. Farrell, often set in Irish country houses and featuring
witty portrayals of family life, albeit with serious undercurrents. Titles
are The Knight of Cheerful Countenance
(1926), Young Entry (1928), Taking Chances (1929), Mad Puppetstown (1931), Conversation Piece (1932), Devoted Ladies (1934), Full House (1935), The Rising Tide (1937), Two Days in Aragon (1941), Loving Without Tears (1951, aka The Enchanting Witch), and Treasure Hunt (1951). Devoted Ladies is also known for its
portrayal of a lesbian relationship only a few years after the Well of Loneliness trial. Following
her husband’s death in 1946, Keane remained out of the limelight until her
friend, the actress Peggy Ashcroft, helped her to publish a new novel, Good Behaviour (1981), which was
widely acclaimed, nominated for the Booker Prize, and adapted for the BBC,
after which Virago reprinted all of her earlier novels. She subsequently
published two more novels, Time after
Time (1983) and Loving and Giving
(1988).
|
|
KEATE, EDITH MURRAY (24 Nov 1866
– 22 Feb 1945)
1910s, 1930s
Author of a popular guide to Hampton Court Palace (1932), Keate also wrote
seven novels, most including criminous elements. A Garden of the Gods (1914) seems to be primarily a romance, but
the heroine also has harrowing adventures with her aristocratic lover’s
rather shady mother. A Wild-Cat Scheme (1930) features a Jewish
detective investigating a murder in an English country house. The Jackanapes Jacket (1931), subtitled “A Thrilling Story of a
Murder at Hampton Court,” deals with the murder of the ”Master of the
King’s Tennis Courts” and the possible sighting of Samuel Pepys’ ghost; it
was released in e-book format in the UK as Murder at Hampton Court. The
Mimic (1932), which was dedicated to actress Ruth Draper, features a
woman who uses her acting ability to extricate a friend from a sticky
situation. In Demon of the Air (1936) and Demon Again (1937), a
Scotland Yard detective pursues a master jewel thief who also happens to be a
daredevil pilot. And The Mystery of Nelson's Coat (1936) is set at the
Greenwich Royal Navy College—“a well-conceived and thrilling mystery
concerning Nelson’s coat, the actual coat in which the gallant Admiral met
his death.” Keate’s final book was a biography, Nelson's Wife: The First
Biography of Frances Herbert, Viscountess Nelson (1939). On the 1939
England & Wales Register, she gave her birth date as 24 Nov 1868, but she
is shown on the 1881 census, taken in April of 1881, as 14 years old, making
it most likely the year was actually 1866.
|
|
KEECH, GERTRUDE CLARA (14 Jun 1896 – 28 Aug 1972)
(née Catchpole, aka Gertrude C. Tennant)
1920s, 1960s
Author of at least two novels. Adrift (1923) appeared under her pseudonym, then she appears not
to have published another book until the 1960s, when she published several
works of local history as well as a mystery, The Charter Lane Mystery (1967), under her married name. Another
work, The Record of Jeffrye Cranfield
(1962), could be a novel as well, but information is extremely scarce.
|
|
Keepel,
Charlotte
see TORDAY, URSULA
|
|
Keir,
Christina
see PULLEIN-THOMPSON,
CHRISTINE
|
|
KEITH, FELICITY (dates unknown)
(pseudonym of a Miss Montserrat, first name unknown)
1930s
Untraced author of a single girls' school story, The Oakhill Guide Company (1933).
|
|
Keith, J. Kilmeny
see MALLESON, LUCY BEATRICE
|
|
KELLINO, PAMELA (10 Mar 1916 –
29 Jun 1996)
(née Ostrer, later married name Mason)
1940s
Wife of James Mason for some years and mother-in-law of American pop singer
Belinda Carlisle. Actress, screenwriter and author of four novels—This Little Hand (1941), A Lady Possessed (1943, aka Del Palma), about a woman who believes
herself possessed by the wife of a pop singer, The Blinds Are Down (1944), and Ignoramus, Ignoramus (1946).
|
|
Kellow, Kathleen
see HIBBERT, ELEANOR
|
|
KELLY, MARY [THERESA] (28 Dec
1927 - 2017)
(née Coolican)
1950s – 1970s
Author of 10 acclaimed mystery novels. The St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers describes The Twenty-Fifth Hour (1971): "It
tells of an Englishwoman holidaying in Normandy with a small barely illegal
task to perform on the side. A story so mild as hardly to exist. The woman does
later become involved in a plot concerned with an extreme Rightist
organisation, but again this is pretty conventional and even tame. Yet one
reads almost as eagerly as if the story had been put together by Alistair
MacLean and the plot devised by Ira Levin because from her very first
sentence Mary Kelly observed so meticulously, described so exactly and
economically." Kelly's other
novels are A Cold Coming (1956), Dead Man's Riddle (1957), The Christmas Egg (1958), The Spoilt Kill (1961, reprinted by Virago),
Due to a Death (1962, aka The Dead of Summer), March to the Gallows (1964), Dead Corse (1966), Write on Both Sides of the Paper (1969),
and That Girl in the Alley (1974),
after which she apparently stopped writing. Several of her titles have been
reissued in the British Library Crime Classics series.
|
|
KELSTON, BEATRICE (1875/6 – 17 Jun
1951)
(pseudonym of Adelaide Janetta Brownjohn, married
name Bluett-Duncan)
1910s - 1920
Actress, playwright, and author of
six novels—most but not all of them humorous romances. A Three-Cornered Duel (1912) is about the complications of a
young man in love, by turn, with each of two twins. Seekers Every One (1913) is a “charming romance” of a girl’s
search for happiness “in love, on the stage, and in various spheres of life.”
In All the Joneses (1917),
"Old Jones—a queer, selfish millionaire—leaves a vast fortune, and the
problem to whom it falls, and the quest for the same, provides the 'motif' of
a racy and thoroughly entertaining story." Bertha in the Background (1920), according to a contemporary
reviewer, "shows what a first-rate inventor of farcical comedy she is,”
and features a stodgy old bestselling novelist and his attempts to get his
“madcap” daughter under control. Two of her works seem more serious in tone—The Blows of Circumstance (1915) is an
ultimately tragic tale of a young woman determined to make her way in the
theatre, and The Edge of Today
(1918) is about an unhappily married woman who wants to belong to today
instead of yesterday. Kelston also wrote a number of plays and several radio
plays for the BBC Children’s Hour. Her plays include Indian Summer (1933), adapted from Vita SACKVILLE-WESTS’s novel All Passion Spent.
|
|
KEMP, DIANA (2 Jan 1919 – 21 Oct 2010)
(née Moyle,
later married names Simpson and Howell)
1950s – 1960s
Author of nearly a dozen novels, usually with a
romantic element. The Fencers
(1957) is set in London and Mallorca with characters working in the newspaper
business, while in Touch Wood
(1964) a young woman travels to the Scottish Highlands to escape her past.
Other titles are Reel of Three
(1955), My Mother's Keeper (1956), The Day of the Rowan (1956), A Reed from the River (1959), Firebird (1960), Wings of the Wind (1961), No
More Peacocks (1962), The Same Boat
(1966), and The Small Hours (1968).
In an exchange of messages on Ancestry, her family told me that Kemp wrote
her books in a Scottish "hideaway" near Oban. Thank you to them for
confirming her information for this entry.
|
|
KENEALY, [MARY] ANNESLEY (1861 –
22 Oct 1926)
1910s
Sister of Arabella KENEALY. Trained nurse and author of sensationalistic
feminist novels, such as Thus Saith Mrs
Grundy (1911), about a prostitute (supposedly based on a woman Kenealy
had really met), The Poodle Woman (1913),
about women's rights in divorce and separation, and A Water-Fly's Wooing (1914), which railed against interracial
marriage. In 1915, after losing a slander case, she attempted suicide by
taking poison while still in the courtroom.
|
|
KENEALY, ARABELLA [MADONNA] (11 Apr
1859 – 18 Nov 1938)
1890s – 1910s
Doctor, early feminist (albeit with powerfully
essentialist views), and novelist. Titles include Dr. Janet of Harley Street (1893), about a lesbian doctor, A Semi-Detached Marriage (1898), Charming Renée (1900), King Edward Intervenes (1910), My Beautiful Neighbour (1911), and This Thing We Have Prayed For (1915).
|
|
Kendall, John
see BRASH, MARGARET M[AUD].
|
|
KENNEDY, JOAN (12 Apr 1885 -
1965)
(pseudonym of Alice Mabel Gibbs, married name Morrison)
1920s – 1960s
Author of nearly 70 romance novels, including The Muck Pond (1923), Miss
Lavender of London (1929), Ragged
Orchid (1932), Magnolias in the
Rain (1948), Flaming Days
(1950), and Love in the Mist
(1953), as well as a memoir, Myself the
Pilgrim (1952).
|
|
KENNEDY, MARGARET [MOORE] (23 Apr 1896 – 31 Jul 1967)
(married name Davies)
1920s – 1960s
Playwright, screenwriter, and author of nearly two
dozen novels. Her best known work was the
massively successful The Constant Nymph
(1924), about an eccentric family, which was also dramatized and filmed. She
later published a sequel called The Fool of the Family (1930). Among her other
novels are The Ladies of Lyndon
(1923), Return I Dare Not (1931), A Long Time Ago (1932), Together and Apart (1936), The
Feast (1950), Lucy
Carmichael (1951), Troy Chimneys (1953), A Night in Cold Harbour (1960), The Forgotten Smile (1961), and Women at Work (1966). Where
Stands a Wingèd Sentry (1941) is her memoir of the early days of World
War II. The Feast (1950), sometimes
considered Kennedy's best work, is set firmly in the immediate postwar,
including concerns about rationing and the fact that the central catastrophe
of the novel is brought about by a stray mine which has exploded a few months
earlier. I wrote about it here.
|
|
KENNY, LOUISE M[ARY]. STACPOOLE
(1885 – 9 Jun 1933)
(née Dunne)
1900s – 1910s
Author of
nine novels described as girls' romances, including several historical
novels. Titles are The Red-Haired Woman
(1905), Love Is Life (1910), At the Court of Il Moro (1911), Carrow of Carrowduff (1911), The King's Kiss (1912), Daffodil's Love Affairs (1913), Our Own Country (1913), Mary: A Romance of the West Country
(1915), and Heart of the Scarlet Fire
(1916).
|
|
KENNY, MEAVE (25 Mar 1900 - ????)
(married name Fine/Fyne?)
1930s
Trailblazing Irish surgeon and
researcher who specialized in obstetrics and spent considerable time working
to improve care in India. She published one novel, I’ll Change the Colour
(1935), which follows its heroine “from the nationalism of the Irish patriot
to reconciliation with England, the arch-enemy, by the path of medical
service among the women of India and love from the Englishman whose child she
was to bear.” She may be the Meave Kenny who married a Simon Fine and
relocated to Australia, but I’m not certain.
|
|
Kent, Helen
see PETTMAN, GRACE
|
|
KENT,
MARY (17 Oct 1877 - ????)
(pseudonym of
Mabel Mary Powell Buckey, married name Andrews)
1940s
Author, with her husband (James Chapman Andrews, who wrote as Michael Kent),
of a single mystery/thriller, The
Armitage Case (1943).
|
|
KENT, NORA (20 Feb 1899 – 7 Oct 1977)
1920s – 1970s
Author of nearly 50 novels over more than five
decades, often focused on rural life in Sussex, where she spent much of her
life. A few of her later works seem to include an element of crime. Titles
include The Greater Dawn (1920), The Vintage (1925), Starveacres (1930), Rainbow at Night (1932), Fire Among Thorns (1935), Unto Us a Child (1943), Landscape Under Snow (1948), Candles for a Journey (1954), The Hour Before Sunset (1960), A Charm of Nieces (1962), A Hint of Murder (1967), The Albatross Aunt (1971), and Uncertain Anchorage (1975).
|
|
Kent, Pamela
see POLLOCK, IDA [JULIE]
|
|
KENYON, EDITH C[AROLINE]. (1854
– 21 Jun 1925)
1880s – 1920s
Author of nearly 60 volumes of fiction for adults
and children, including several boys' school stories and six early
collaborations with religious writer Richard Gilbert Soans. Among her
numerous titles are Hilda, or, Life's Discipline (1881), Jack's Heroism: A Tale of Schoolboy Life (1883), Margaret Casson's Resolve: A Tale of
Victory (1885), Eveline's Key-Note,
or, In Harmony With Life (1890), The
Mystery of the Brilliants (1896), A
Girl in a Thousand (1904), A
Nurse's Love Story (1907), Two
Girls in a Siege: A Tale of the Great Civil War (1908), The Winning of Gwenora (1913), Derrick Orme's Schooldays (1913), Pickles, A Red Cross Heroine (1916),
and Lady Satton's Granddaughter
(1921).
|
|
KEOWN,
ANNA GORDON (8 Dec 1896 – 29 Jan 1957)
(married names
Seymour and Gosse)
1930s
Poet and author of four novels. The Cat
Who Saw God (1932) is a comic novel about the Emperor Nero reincarnated
as a cat living with an elderly spinster (no kidding). I wrote about it here. Mr. Thompson in the Attic (1933) is a
grown-up school story set at a prep school on the south coast of England. I
wrote briefly about that one here. Mr. Theobald's Devil (1935) is,
according to an e-Bay listing, about a lazy parson who "laments that he,
a human being to whom activity in any form is supremely distasteful, should
be called upon to perform his duties in a parish completely given over to
hills." Wickham's Fancy (1939)
is “a gentle, whimsical book” about an English village resisting
modernisation. Her Collected Poems
appeared in 1953. Her most famous poetic work is a sonnet called
"Reported Missing," which was long studied in British schools.
Keown's father-in-law was poet and author Edmund Gosse.
|
|
KERBY,
SUSAN ALICE (4 Oct 1908 – 30 Jul 1990)
(pseudonym of
Alice Elizabeth Burton, married name Aitken, aka Elizabeth Burton)
1930s – 1940s
Best known for her popular histories of life in various periods of British
history, written under her own name, including The Elizabethans at Home (1958) and The Georgians at Home (1967), Kerby also wrote six earlier
novels, all but one under her Kerby pseudonym. Miss Carter and the Ifrit (1945), which I reviewed here, is an unusual
fantasy about a spinster in the dreary final days of World War II learning to
enjoy life again with the help of a genie. It was reprinted in 2019 as a
Furrowed Middlebrow book by Dean Street Press. Cling to Her, Waiting (1939), published as Elizabeth Burton, is
“the story of a woman torn between two men of different temperament, and who
becomes the mistress of a childhood friend in order to save him from the
consequences of an unhappy association.” Fortnight
in Frascati (1940), which I reviewed here, is about the
amusing results of an eccentric duchess offering free holidays in her Italian
villa. Many Strange Birds (1947,
aka Fortune's Gift) and Gone to Grass (1948, aka The Roaring Dove) both have Ruritanian
settings, the former involving an unlikely romance between an American
professor and a bored young man, the latter about a perfect socialist
monarchy in which residents are bored stiff. Finally, Mr. Kronion (1949) is about a Greek god who comes to the defense
of English village life.
|
|
Kernahan, Mrs. Coulson
see BETTANY, JEANNIE GWYNNE
|
|
Kernahan, J. G.
see BETTANY, JEANNIE GWYNNE
|
|
Kerr, Felicity
see BRADLEY, NORAH MARY
|
|
KERRUISH,
JESSIE DOUGLAS (1884 - 1949)
1910s – 1930s
Author of four novels, one children's title, and a story collection. Best
known for The Undying Monster
(1922), filmed in 1942, about a family believing itself cursed by an unknown
creature, and a woman trying to get to the bottom of it. John at Pretty
Sinister discussed it here as an early
combination of detective novel and the supernatural. Her two earlier novels, Miss Haroun al-Raschid (1917) and The Girl from Kurdistan (1918), are
lighter adventure tales. Her final novel was The Hull of Coins (1931), about a family using all their
resources to locate a sunken treasure. Her first published work, The Raksha Rajah, or, The King of the
Ogres (1911), was for children. Babylonian
Nights' Entertainments (1934) were fantastic tales with Arabian themes.
She published large amounts of short fiction in periodicals, but some of
those may have been lost as a result of German bombing of the British Museum.
|
|
KEYNES, HELEN MARY (18 Jan 1892
– 26 Aug 1975)
(aka Clementine Hunter)
1910s, 1930s – 1940s
Author of
six novels. The first two—The Spanish
Marriage (1913) and Honour the King
(1914)—written when she was in her early 20s, are described as romances. Murder in Rosemary Lane (1936) was
praised as a “rapid, continually exciting thriller” about two bodies in a
London suburb, one of which tends to move from place to place. Who Killed Jefferson Broome? (1937),
which also received critical praise, is about the murder of a wealthy man in
his London study. Salute to the Brave
(1940) was subtitled “A Thrilling
Story of the Gestapo in England,” and Queens Have Died Young and Fair (1947) deals with the murder of a
W.A.A.F. These last two were published under her pseudonym.
|
|
KIDD, BEATRICE ETHEL (12 Oct
1867 – 28 Jun 1958)
(aka Mark Winterton)
1910s
Secretary of the British Union for
the Abolition of Vivisection and biographer of its head, Walter Hadwen. Kidd
also published one novel, The Cassowary
(1918), under her pseudonym.
|
|
Killin,
Gladys Ellen
see ADENEY, GLADYS ELLEN
|
|
KILPATRICK, FLORENCE
[ANTOINETTE] (1888 – 1 Jan 1968)
(née Calvert, later married name Crowder)
1920s – 1940s
Author of nearly 30 novels, including a humorous
series featuring a main character named Elizabeth—Our Elizabeth (1920), Our
Elizabeth Again (1923), Our
Elizabeth in America (1936), Elizabeth
in Africa (1940), Elizabeth in
Wartime (1942), Elizabeth to the
Rescue (1942), Elizabeth the Sleuth
(1946), and Elizabeth Finds the Body
(1949). Other titles include Camilla in
a Caravan (1925), Rift Valley: An
East African Romance (1930), Getting
George Married (1933), The Eldest
Miss Grimmett (1936), Within Four
Walls (1938), and Gentlemen Should
Marry (1944).
|
|
KILROY, MARGARET (dates unknown)
1900s – 1910s
Untraced author of two early girls' school stories, The Little Torment (1909) and Study
Number Eleven (1911).
|
|
KING,
CONSTANCE (dates unknown)
1940s – 1950s
Unidentified author of four novels, about which few details are available. A
blurb describes Down to a Sunlit Sea
(1951) as an "[e]ntertaining novel about the effect on our lives of
holiday acquaintances." The others are To a Dark Lady (1947), Go
Not, Happy Day (1949), and Mary and
the Lion (1953).
|
|
KING,
MAUDE EGERTON (8 Feb 1867 – 23 Apr 1927)
(née Hine,
first name sometimes Maud)
1890s – 1910s
Poet and author of four novels and two story collections. Her most famous
work is The Conversion of Miss Caroline
Eden (1900), about a spinster who gains religious fervor and goes mad
because of the evil of the world. Her other fiction is Round and About a Brighton Coach Office (1896), Studies in Love (1900), Christian's Wife: A Story of Graubünden
(1902), The Archdeacon's Family
(1909), and The Country Heart and Other
Stories (1911). She and her husband worked to promote rural crafts in and
around Haselmere.
|
|
KING-HALL, [OLGA] LOU (LOUISE)
[ELISABETH] (22 Feb 1897 – 7 Jan 1985)
1930s – 1940s
Sister of novelist Magdalen KING-HALL and daughter
of Olga KING-HALL. Author of four novels—The
Well-Meaning Young Man (1930), Family
Ship (1938), Fly Envious Time
(1944), and The Sun Climbs Slow
(1946). Fly Envious Time was a
science-fiction novel set in the late 20th century and dealing with Eugenics
and World War III. She also edited Sea
Saga (1935), a collection of "the naval diaries of four generations
of the King-Hall family."
|
|
KING-HALL, MAGDALEN (22 Jul 1904
– 1 Jan 1971)
(married name Perceval-Maxwell, aka Cleone Knox)
1920s – 1960s
Daughter of Olga KING-HALL and sister of Lou
KING-HALL. Author more than a dozen novels, though still best known for her
debut, The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion in the Year 1764-1765 (1924), a humorous novel, written under
her pseudonym, which at first was taken as a real 18th century diary. This
was followed by a pseudo-memoir I Think I Remember (1927), which was
subtitled "Being the Random Recollections of Sir Wickham Woolicomb, An
Ordinary English Snob and Gentleman." Many later works were historical,
including Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton (1944), which was
filmed as The Wicked Lady (1945), featuring Margaret Lockwood and
James Mason. Other titles include Gay Crusaders (1934), Lady Sarah
(1939), Lord Edward (1943), Tea at Crumbo Castle (1949), Venetian
Bride (1954), and The Noble Savages (1962). She also published two
children's titles, Jehan of the Ready Fists (1936), set during the
Crusades, and Sturdy Rogue (1941), set in Elizabethan England.
|
|
KING-HALL, OLGA [MARY FELICIA
DOROTHEA] (23 Aug 1867 – 14 Aug 1950)
(née Ker)
1920s
Mother of novelists Magdalen KING-HALL and Lou
KING-HALL. Author of at least three novels—An Engagement (1921), What
the Blounts Did (1922), and Her
Italian Husband (1926). One source says she also published novels in
Italian, but if so I've not located them.
|
|
Kingsley, Anna
see HANSHEW, HAZEL P[HILLIPS].
|
|
KINLOCK (KINLOCH), LUCY
[MARGARET] (4 Aug 1899 - c1995)
1930s
From a Scottish family, but settling later in life in the U.S., Kinloch
published a single novel, A World
Within a School (1937), based on her own time at Harrogate Ladies'
College, which Sims & Clare describe as straddling the line between
girls' story and adult novel. Her real family name was Kinloch, but her
publisher used Kinlock for her book.
|
|
KIRBY, ELIZABETH (dates unknown)
1910s – 1930s
Untraced author of six novels—The
Bridegroom (1916), Little Miss
Muffet (1918), Penelope (1920,
published in the U.S. as The Adorable
Dreamer), Fugitives (1925), All Saints’ Day (1931), and Liberty Let Loose (1931).
|
|
KIRKHAM, NELLIE (28 Aug 1897 – 28 May
1979)
(married name Myatt)
1930s, 1950s
Historian and expert on lead mining
in Derbyshire and author of several books on the topic, as well as writing
two novels. Unrest of Their Time (1935) is a time slip story, in which
a young married couple take rooms near an old tin mine, and are able to see
the previous occupants of the cottage, not as ghosts but as parallel
existences. In the original edition, the events of the present were printed
in black and the earlier events in red. Challenge to the Dark (1951)
was set in the mid-1800s in Derbyshire and Paris, and included the Battle of
Sedan. Kirkham was also a proficient artist and illustrator.
|
|
KITCHIN, M[ARY]. LE S[BIREL].
(13 Mar 1905 – 19 Jan 1981)
1920s
Author of a single novel, Tune of Youth
(1927), and co-author of a 1932 non-fiction work called World of Today. Little information is available about her or her
work.
|
|
KLICKMANN,
[EMILY] FLORA (26 Jan 1867 – 20 Nov 1958)
(married name
Henderson-Smith)
1890s – 1930s
Children’s author, editor of Girl's Own Paper for more than two
decades, and author of The Flower-Patch
Among the Hills (1916) and its sequels, humorous memoirs about gardening
and daily life. She published numerous works about sewing and other crafts.
Her fiction includes The Ambitions of
Jenny Ingram: A True Story of Modern London Life (1905), Between the Larch-woods and the Weir
(1917), The Trail of the Ragged Robin
(1921), The Carillon of Scarpa (1925),
The Lady-with-the-Crumbs (1931), Mystery in the Windflower Wood (1932),
and Delicate Fuss (1933).
|
|
KNIGHT, FLORENCE M[ARIAN]. (1876
– 8 Jan 1954)
1920s, 1950s
Author of a single girls' school story, Keep
Troth (1951), and one other earlier work of fiction, But If Not (1924), about which little is known. She also wrote
history and biography, and one undated title, In Honey-Bird Land, described as an account, for young readers,
of aspects of life in India.
|
|
KNIGHT,
IRENE [HILDA] (16 Sept 1911 – 11 Jul 1995)
1960s
Author of four romantic novels—The Road
to Avalon (1960), Apart from All
Else (1960), To Me—Come True
(1961), and Someone for Julia
(1962).
|
|
KNIGHT, ISOBEL [MARY] (1905 -
1988)
(married name Lockie)
1940s
Scottish-born author of numerous readers and story books for younger
children, as well as retellings of works by other authors. The only title
I've found that appears to be for older children is The Mystery of the Island (1948), about children exploring a
ruined castle on a small Scottish isle. She was married in Calcutta and
apparently lived for a considerable number of years in the U.S. She appears
on the 1930 U.S. census living in Detroit and working as a stenographer in an
auto factory.
|
|
KNOWLES,
[EMILIE] CECILIA [MARGARET] (5 May 1899 – 22 Oct 1992)
(née Garry, earlier married name
Naumann)
1940s – 1960
Author of five children's titles—Hua
Ma, the Flower Pony (1947), Torry,
the Roe Deer (1950), We Went to
Live in Scotland (1954), Kelpie, a
Scottish Sheepdog (1958), and Hippo,
a Welsh Cob (1960).
|
|
KNOX,
ANN (ANNA) [ALLNUTT] (8 Sept 1901 – 24 Jul 1978)
(married name
Daniell)
1920s – 1930s
Author of one volume of poetry and five novels. The first, Flowerdown (1928), is about "the
impact a crass, monied American family has upon an aristocratic English
family down on its luck after The Great War." The others are Vallejo Kitty (1929), Featured on Broadway (1930), Sons and Daughters (1932), and No Left Turn (1936).
|
|
Knox,
Cleone
see KING-HALL, MAGDALEN
|
|
KYLE,
ELISABETH (1901 – 23 Feb 1982)
(pseudonym of
Agnes Mary Robertson Dunlop, aka Jan Ralston)
1930s – 1980s
Author of more than 60 volumes of fiction for adults and children author.
Much of her work for children makes use of her Scottish background. Titles
include Visitors from England
(1941), Holly Hotel (1945), The Mirrors of Castle Doone (1947), The Captain's House (1952), The House of the Pelican (1954), The Stilt Walkers (1972), and The Key of the Castle (1976). She also
published nearly a dozen fictionalized biographies of famous figures for
children. Her adult fiction includes The
Begonia Bed (1934), But We Are
Exiles (1942), Carp Country
(1946), The Regent's Candlesticks
(1954), Queen's Evidence (1969), Free as Air (1974), The Stark Inheritance (1978), and Bridge of the Blind Man (1983).
|
No comments:
Post a Comment