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CLEAR, GWEN (GWENDOLINE) [FRANCES] (6 Apr 1905 – 17
Sept 1978)
(married name Twitchett)
1930s
Unidentified poet and author of two novels. The Bookman called her first novel, The Years That Crown (1930), "a slender bit of work which
betrays a sensitive mind, hovering delicately over the lives of a group of
people, but never quite encompassing them." Information about her second
novel, The Undisciplined Heart
(1938), is even more sparse. In Reggie Oliver's bio of Stella Gibbons, she is
mentioned as a friend of Gibbons.
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CLEEVE, CLAUDIA (2 Dec 1883 – 4 Jul 1944)
(pseudonym of Maud Kate
Connor, née Tymms)
1940s
Author of a single children's book, Oak
Apple Inn at Thistledown Bottom (1942).
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CLELAND, MARY (31 Jul 1872 – 1 Apr
1937)
(pseudonym of Margaret/Margot Barbour Wells)
1920s
Scottish author of four novels. The Two
Windows (1922) was described by the Queenslander
as "something fragrant, delicate, and altogether charming," and The Sure Traveller (1923) appears to
be a sequel. Her other two novels are The
Silver Whistle (1920) and The
Forsaken Way (1927). One source called her a "prolific" author,
which makes one wonder if she wrote additional fiction under other
so-far-unknown pseudonyms.
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CLEMENTS, EILEEN HELEN (20 Apr 1905 – 23 Mar 1993)
(married name Hunter)
1930s – 1960s
Author of nearly two dozen mysteries, some with thriller elements and many
featuring series detective Alister Woodhead, an agent for the "Ministry
of Scientific Research." Three have WWII elements. Cherry Harvest (1943) is set at an evacuated girls'
school during a half-term break. I reviewed it here. According to a
contemporary review, in Berry Green
(1945) "[t]he pastoral village of Berry Green is abuzz with excitement
over the visit by a famour actor who says he is doing research but might
actually be a German spy looking for a lost bomb." And in Weathercock (1949), Woodhead and his
wife return to the home they lent to refugees during the war, to find a
"library book with interesting sketches inside." Other titles are Let Him Die (1939), Make Fame a Monster (1940), Bright Intervals (1940), Rain Every
Day (1941), Perhaps a Little Danger
(1942), Sea-Change (1951), Over and Done With (1952), Parcel of Fortune (1954), Chair-Lift (1954), Discord in the Air (1955), The Other Island (1956), Back in Daylight (1957), Uncommon Cold (1958), High Tension (1959), Honey for the Marshall (1960), A Note of Enchantment (1961), and Let or Hindrance (1963).
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CLEMOW, [IVY MAY] VALENTINE (14 May 1894 - 1989)
(married name Matthews)
1930s - 1940s
Silent film and stage actress and author of eight romantic novels—Quetta Love Song: A Story of Modern India
(1936), Brother of the Dark (1937),
Shanghai Lullaby (1937), Chinese Chanty (1938), African Rhapsody (1939), Play in the Sun (1940), My Candle Burns at Both Ends (1947),
and Love Goes Lightly (1948).
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CLEUGH, SOPHIA [OLIVIA] (17 Sept 1876 - 1958)
(née Sadler, aka George Oleson)
1920s – 1930s
Author of 16 novels which seem to have been particularly popular in the U.S.,
where she lived for many years (and was for a time a screenwriter at
Universal Pictures). Under her own name, she published Matilda, Governess of the English (1924), Ernestine Sophie (1925), Jeanne
Margot (1927), A Common Cheat
(1928), Spring (1929), Enchanting Clementina (1930), Song Bird (1930), The Daisy Boy (1931, aka Young
Jonathan), Loyal Lady (1932,
aka Anne Marguerite), The Hazards of Belinda (1933), Lindy Lou (1934), The Angel Who Couldn't Sing (1935), and Wind Which Moved a Ship (1936). As George Oleson, she also published
Violin (1932), The Greater Gifts (1934), and Modern
Girl (1935). Some sources mention an additional pseudonym, Ursula Keene,
but no books in either the British Library or the Library of Congress are
credited to such a name—perhaps she used it for periodical fiction or
articles?
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CLEVES, [IVY] MARJORIE [DOREEN] (26 Sept 1904 – 28 Jul 1994)
1930s - 1960
Author of 10 works of children's fiction, including several school stories.
Sims and Clare note her tendency toward unrealistic "thriller
plots". Titles are A Term at
Crossways (1939), Chums at Pinewood
(1943), A School Goes to Scotland
(1944), Christmas at the Priory
(1946), Holly House School (1947), Houseboat Holiday (1948), The School in the Dell (1948), The Lilac Grange Ghost (1949), The Secret of Cheswood (1949), and The Merryfield Mystery (1960).
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CLEWES, DOROTHY M[ARY]. (6 Jul 1907 – 8 Feb 2003)
(née Parkin, aka Dorothy
Parkin)
1920s, 1940s – 1970s
Prolific author of fiction for children, as well as several novels for
adults. Her first book, a school story called The Rivals of Maidenhurst (1925), which Sims and Clare describe
as "an extraordinarily bad book" for living up to all the
stereotypes of school stories, was published when she was only 17. She
returned in the 1940s and published around 40 more volumes of fiction,
including a popular series of mysteries featuring the Hadley family. Titles
include She Married a Doctor
(1943), The Cottage in the Wild Wood
(1945), The Blossom on the Bough
(1949), Summer Cloud (1951), I Came to a Wood (1956), The Jade Green Cadillac (1958), All the Fun of the Fair (1961), A Bit of Magic (1967), Storm Over Innish (1972), and The Testing Year (1977). I've written
about her here.
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Clifford,
Lilian
see FITZGERALD, EILEEN
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CLIFFORD, LUCY JANE (2 Aug 1846 – 21 Apr 1929)
(née Lane, aka John
Inglis, aka Mrs. W. K. Clifford)
1880s – 1910s
Playwright, children's author, and novelist whose salons included the likes
of Leslie Stephen, Henry James, and Vernon Lee. She began publishing serial
fiction in the early 1880s, but her first success was the scandalous Mrs. Keith's Crime (1885), published
anonymously, which has all the hallmarks of the potboiling melodrama. Others
include Love Letters from a Worldly
Woman (1891), Aunt Anne (1892),
Sir George's Objection (1910) and George Wendern Gave a Party (1912).
Two of her short stories, "The New Mother" and "Wooden
Tony," have frequently been reprinted in anthologies of children's
stories.
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CLIFFORD, SUSAN (dates unknown)
1930s
Author of a single girls' school story, The
Mugwump (1930). Apparently her only other published work was an activity
book called Plans: A Book for Holidays
and a Cure for "What-Shall-We-Do-Next?" (1929), which had
either a sequel or a reprint called What
Shall We Do Next? (1931).
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CLIVE,
MARY [KATHERINE] (23 Aug 1907 – 19 Mar 2010)
(née
Pakenham, aka Hans Duffy)
1930s, 1950s
Sister of Pansy PAKENHAM and biographer Violet Powell, Clive published
four pseudonymous novels in the 1930s—In
England Now (1932), Seven by Seven
(1933), Lucasta's Wedding (1936),
and Under the Sugar-Plum Tree
(1937)—now vanishingly rare, but I was able to review the second here. Clive is best known now for
her acclaimed, humorously autobiographical novel, Christmas with the Savages (1955). She wrote two other more
straightforward memoirs, Brought Up and
Brought Out (1938) and The Day of
Reckoning (1964), as well as biographies of John Donne (1966) and Edward
IV (1973).
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CLOSE, EVELYNE [CHARLOTTE MIDDLETON] (c1874 – 15 Oct 1935)
1910s – 1920s
Author of ten novels—The Harvest
(1911), The Roll of Honour (1915), The Tide at Night (1918), Cherry Isle (1920), Adam and Eve and the Lonely Lady
(1922), A Human Heart (1924), When Aloes Bloom (1925), Wild Roses: A Story of the Sussex Hills
(1927), What Shall It Profit?
(1927), and Through the Lattice
(1929). Forum described the last as
"wrought out of the mists and fog and loneliness of England's north
country."
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CLOSS, HANNAH [MARGARET MARY] (6 Dec 1905
– 8 Oct 1953)
(née Priebsch)
1940s – 1950s
Author of four historical novels which received acclaim in their time. Tristan (1940) is a retelling of the
medieval legend, and the Tarn Trilogy—which includes High Are the Mountains (1945), And Sombre the Valleys (1949, aka Deep Are the Valleys), and The
Silent Tarn (1955)—is set in southern France in the 13th century. She
also published a memoir, Art and Life
(1936).
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CLOUD, YVONNE (17 Apr 1903 – 30 Jun 1999)
(pseudonym of Yvonne Helene Kapp, née Mayer)
1930s
Journalist, activist, biographer, and author of four novels, which seem to
have inspired some acclaim and considerable outrage. Of her first, Nobody Asked You (1932), Gerald Gould
ranted at considerable length in the Observer,
summing up the book as "a vaguely sad, wretched, drab, hopeless picture
of nincompoops and ne'er-do-wells" and bemoans its "depravity"
(though by the following year, Gould was ready to praise her third novel, Mediterranean Blues (1933), set in the
south of France, as "deliciously and almost consistently funny").
Her other two novels were Short Lease
(1932) and The Houses in Between
(1938).
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Clynder, Monica
see MUIR, MARIE
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COALES, K[ATHLEEN]. WALLIS (10 Jan 1893 – 20 Sept 1982)
1920s – 1930s
Illustrator and author of nine works of children's fiction, some with
scouting and/or mystery themes. Titles are The Dodo's Egg (1923), The
Wharfbury Watch-Dogs (1930), The
Pennyfound Puzzle (1931), The Monkey
Patrol (1932), The Golden Horse
(1934), The Secret of the Fens
(1935), The Mascot at No. 7 (1936),
Up with the Falcon! (1936), and Patricia at the Wheel (1937). Her
father was Herbert George Coales, who also published scouting fiction under
the pseudonym Mark Harborough.
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COATS, VICTORIA T[AYLOR]. (16 Apr 1885 – 4 Jan 1940)
1920s
Scottish poet and author of three novels—A
Maid in Armour (1923), Discovery
(1926), and The Clock Tower (1926).
A critical blurb about the first sums it up as: "The heroine and her
mother, in turn, have to reconcile their public crusade with the claims of
love." From a second blurb, it appears that their crusade is women's
rights.
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COATTS, RITA (MARGUERITE) [HARCOURT]
(2 Feb 1883 – 22 Mar 1955)
(née Burrage)
1930s – 1950s
From a family of boys' authors including father Edwin Harcourt Burrage,
brother A. H. Burrage, and cousin A. M. Burrage. Coatts wrote more than a
dozen girls' school stories and about fifteen children's thrillers, often
quite implausible. I wrote about School
on an Island (1938) here. Other titles include The Taming of Patricia (1934), Facing It Out (1937), Jane
of Cherry Barn (1938), Ghosts at
Stark Hall, or, "Pip,' the Sleuth!" (1938), Schoolgirl Pluck (1947), The House with Dark Corners (1948), The Wrong School (1949), Room for One More (1950), Breaking Bounds (1951), Peggy Means Luck (1953), and The Forbidden Garden (1954).
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COBB, JOYCE (12 Jul 1890 – 16 Jul 1970)
(married name Gow)
1920s
After her first
book of stories from Dickens adapted for children (1910), Cobb published a
single novel, Jane and Herself
(1922), which Bookman praised for
its "delicate grace and understanding and humor."
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COBBETT, ALICE [MARY VIOLET] (1872 – 29 Jan 1942)
1930s
Daughter of Victorian sports journalist Martin Cobbett. Author of two novels— Somehow Lengthened (1932), which
freely adapts Jane Austen's unfinished novel Sanditon, and A Tale of
Treasons (1937), about which information is lacking. Blogger Deborah
Yaffe wrote about the former here, noting that Cobbett's
version of Austen's story includes "a Caribbean love potion, a
kidnapping, a near race riot, a blindfold nighttime journey over rough
terrain, a smuggling gang, a dying prostitute, and a filthy-rich countess
with a philanthropic bent" but also concluding that it's "quite a
lot of fun."
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COBDEN, ELLEN [MELICENT] (c1848 – 4
Sept 1914)
(married name Sickert, aka Miles Amber)
1900s – 1910s
Wife of painter Walter Sickert and sister of publisher T. Fisher Unwin,
Cobden seems to have begun writing late in life. She published two novels—The Wistons (1902), about "the
tragic experiences in society of two daughters of a Sussex farmer and a
gypsy," and Sylvia Saxon: Episodes
in a Life (1914), about "a spoilt heiress struggling with marital
difficulties and social questions" (OCEF).
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COCKIN, JOAN (23 Nov 1919 – 28 May
2014)
(pseudonym of Edith Joan Macintosh)
1940s – 1950s
Trail-blazing diplomat, educational writer, and author of three well-received
detective novels—Curiosity Killed the
Cat (1947), Villainy at Vespers
(1949), and Deadly Earnest
(1952)—all featuring series character Inspector Cam. The first, according to
classiccrimefiction.com, is set in a Cotswold village still haunted by the
war in the form of the Ministry of Scientific Research, set up in wartime but
lingering into peacetime. Cockin did propaganda work in Washington for the
British government during World War II, and was made a Commander of the Order
of the British Empire. John at Pretty Sinister reviewed her second novel here.
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CODD, MARY FRANCES (25 Apr 1893 – 8 Feb 1970)
1930s
Author of four novels—Sisters'
Children (1933), Nephew-in-Law
(1934), Lover's Random (1935), and A Faery's Child (1936).
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COGGIN, JOAN (22 Jul 1898 – 11 Aug 1980)
(aka Joanna Lloyd)
1920s – 1940s
Author of four humorous mysteries, a series of six pseudonymous girls' school
stories, and one early novel, And Why
Not Knowing? (1929), which follows three girls from the end of their
school days through their first years of adulthood. I wrote about it here. The four mysteries, Who Killed the Curate? (1944), Penelope Passes, or Why Did She Die?
(1946), The Mystery at Orchard House
(1946), and Dancing with Death
(1947), all feature Lady Lupin, "the scatterbrained wife of the vicar of
Glanville." Rue Morgue reprinted all four, and I wrote about the first here. Of Coggin's school
stories as Joanna Lloyd, Sims and Clare single out Audrey, a New Girl (1948) as a "masterpiece" of the
genre. The others are Betty of Turner
House (1935), Catherine Goes to
School (1945), Jane Runs Away from
School (1946), Catherine, Head of
the House (1947), and Three New
Girls (1949).
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COLE, MARGARET [ISABEL] (6 May 1893 – 7 May 1980)
(née Postgate, aka M. I.
Cole)
1920s – 1940s
Politician, education advocate, and author of more than 30 mystery novels
with her husband George (G. D. H.) Cole. The Coles' novels are known for
strong characterization and clever methods of murder (see the informative
discussion at GA Detection). Their titles include The Death of a Millionaire (1925), The Murder at Crome House (1927), Poison in the Garden Suburb (1929), Corpse in Canonicals (1930), Death of a Star (1932), Scandal at School (1935), Disgrace to the College (1937), Mrs Warrender's Profession (1938), Murder at the Munition Works (1940), Knife in the Dark (1941), Toper's End (1942), and Birthday Gifts (1946)
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COLE, MARGARET ALICE (15 Apr 1890 – 20
Jun 1967)
(real name Alice Margaret Maria Cole)
1940s – 1960s
Broadcaster, teacher, pianist, founding member of the Romantic Novelists
Association, and author of about two dozen works of fiction. Children's books
include Holiday Camp Mystery
(1959), Anothing Thrilling Holiday
(1964), and Another Holiday Camp
Mystery (1967). Romantic novels include Starlight and Love (1946), Thoroughbred:
A Romance (1949), Passport to
Paradise (1959), Love in Venice
(1962), Romance in the Tyrol
(1964), Love on Tour (1965), Scottish Rhapsody (1966), and Flying to Happiness (1967).
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COLE, SOPHIE (SOPHIA) (15 Nov 1862 – 11 Feb 1947)
1900s – 1940s
Author of the
first book published by Mills & Boon, Arrows
from the Dark (1909), Cole went on to publish more than 60 romances in
all, becoming one of the publisher's bestselling authors. Titles include A Plain Woman's Portrait (1912), Skirts of Straw (1915), A London Posy (1917), Passing Footsteps (1922), Mirage House (1925), Paying the Piper (1927), Witchery (1930), Sixpence in Her Shoe (1932), Cobbler's
Corner (1935), The Joyous Pedlar
(1937), The Valiant Spinster
(1940), Lilac Time in Westminster
(1941), M for Maria (1944), and Queer Neighbours (1946).
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COLEBROOKE, HELEN [EMMA] (1860 – 21
Jan 1916)
1900s – 1910s
Author of two novels—Winged Dreams
(1908), about women's suffrage and apparently based on Colebrooke's own
experiences, and Fetters of the Past
(1914), which appears to also have feminist themes and which the Spectator called conventional but
amusing.
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COLEGATE, ISABEL [DIANA] (10 Sept 1931 - )
(married name Briggs)
1950s – 2000s
Author of a
dozen novels, most famously The
Shooting Party (1981), set at an aristocratic weekend shooting party just
before the outbreak of World War I, which was filmed in 1985 and adapted for
BBC radio in 2010. Her other fiction is The
Blackmailer (1958), A Man of Power
(1960), The Great Occasion (1962), Statues in a Garden (1964), her Orlando Trilogy—comprised of Orlando King (1968), Orlando at the Brazen Threshold
(1971), and Agatha (1973)—News from the City of the Sun (1979), Deceits of Time (1988), The Summer of the Royal Visit (1991),
and Winter Journey (1995). She also
published one collection of stories, A
Glimpse of Sion's Glory (1985).
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COLERIDGE, CHRISTABEL R[OSE]. (25 May 1843 – 14 Nov 1921)
1870s - 1910
Granddaughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Author of more than 40 volumes of
fiction for children and adults, and editor of Christian-themed periodicals
for girls. Titles include Lady Betty
(1870), An English Squire (1881), A Plunge into Troubled Waters (1888), The Green Girls of Greythorpe (1890), A Colt from the Heather (1896), The Thought-Rope (1898), The Winds of Cathrigg (1901), Miss Lucy (1908), and a final
collection of stories that qualifies her for this list, Up-To-Date, and, A Lucky Sixpence (1910). She also published a
biography of her friend Charlotte Yonge (1903).
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Coles, Manning
see MANNING, ADELAIDE FRANCES
OKE
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COLES, P[HOEBE]. CATHERINE (14 Mar 1917 – 4 Mar 2003)
(aka Peter Fraser)
1940s – 1970s
Author of numerous children's books which Sims & Clare describe as
"evangelistic," including girls' school stories and, under her
pseudonym, boys' school stories, as well as other tales. Titles include Tea with the Tennysons (1949), Junior Housekeepers (1950), Wendy of Glendorran (1951), Chubby's First Term (1952), The Rivals of Broadacres (1953), Penelope's Secret (1953), At the King's Command (1953), Grandfather Greenfingers (1955), The Fighting Fifth (1957), The Trio from Dormitory Five (1957), The Cardinals of Cobleigh Manor
(1958), Gillian Joy (1962), The Calders of Cairn Farm (1973), and My Friend Sue (1976).
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Colin,
Ann
see URE, JEAN [ANN]
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COLLAS, CLARE (28 Jun 1885 – 1 Aug 1969)
(née Waters)
1940s
Author of four children's titles—Four's
Company: A Children's Fantasy (1942), The
Flying Village: An Improbable Story (1943), The Blue-Coated Heron (1944), and A Penny for the Guy: A Real Story (1945). Of the last, the Spectator said: "If Real means
true, this tale of a little cockney girl, whose genius (backed by a generous
patroness) carried her swiftly to prizes, fame, the Academy, a holiday in
South Africa, dinner at Government House, and the love of a charming and
wealthy young man, is indeed most striking, and one would like to see her
pictures."
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COLLIER, MADELEINE (?1897-?1965)
(married name Holloway,
tentative but probable dates—see here)
1940s
Children’s author who published mainly for younger children, but several of
her works, such as The Noddles, The Noddles Again, and Beryl's Wonderful Week (all 1944,
according to the British Library catalogue), seem to be longer tales for
older children.
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COLLIN-SMITH, JOYCE [YVONNE] (11 Jan
1919 – 9 Nov 2011)
(née Hartley, earlier married name Brooks)
1950s
Journalist and author of four novels—Locusts
and Wild Honey (1953), The Scorpion
on the Stone (1954), Jeremy Craven
(1958), and A Wreath of Chains
(1960). Thereafter, she focused on spiritual pursuits and
consciousness-raising, including studying with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in
his pre-Beatles days. One later title, Of
Fire and Music (2005), may also be fiction.
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COLLINS, BERTHA [COLIN] (dates
unknown)
1920s – 1930s
Untraced author of more than a dozen romantic novels, including The Deceptions of Sue (1923), The Girl in Mauve (1923), Lady Frivol (1924), Miss Go-Ahead (1925), An Heiress by Chance (1925), Too Clever Clara (1926), Odd Girl Out (1931), The Risk She Ran (1931), and The Charmer (1932).
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COLLINS, FREDA (15 May 1904 – 18 Feb 1992)
(pseudonym of Frederica
Joan Hale Collins)
1930s – 1960s
Playwright,
lecturer, and children's author. Most of her plays and stories were religious
in theme, but she also published a series of books about Brownies, including The Brownies at No. 9 (1936), The Pack That Ran Itself (1956), The Woodland Pack (1957), The Brownie Year (1957), The Good Turn Hunters (1963), and The Patchwork Pack (1968). On the 1939
England & Wales Register, she is identified as an air raid warden.
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COLLINS, [MINNA] MABEL (9 Sept 1851 –
31 Mar 1927)
(married name Cook)
1870s – 1910s
Author of more than two dozen novels, perhaps best remembered for Outlawed: A Novel on the Woman Suffrage
Question (1908). Other works include The
Prettiest Woman In Warsaw (1885), Builders
(1910), Transparent Jewel (1913),
and Crucible (1914).
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Collinson, Nana [Selina]
see ABBOTT, NINA
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COLLIS, LOUISE [EDITH] (29 Jul 1925 - c2009)
1950s
Daughter of diplomat and author Maurice Collis. Biographer, historian, and
author of four novels—Without a Voice
(1951), about a troubled boy retreating into fantasy, A Year Passed (1952), After
the Holiday (1954), and The Angels'
Name (1955). Subjects of her biographies include Margery Kempe and Ethel
Smyth.
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Collyer,
Doric
see HUNT, DOROTHY A[LICE].
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COLMER, [EVELYN] JOYCE (1889 – 20 Dec 1955)
(née Elliott)
1920s
A schoolteacher before she became a journalist and editor, she published a
single girls' school story, Rosemary to
the Rescue (1925), notable—according to Sims and Clare—primarily for its
virulent anti-Semitism.
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COLMORE, GERTRUDE (8 Jun 1860 – 26 Nov
1926)
(pseudonym of Gertrude Renton, married names Dunn
and Baillie-Weaver)
1880s – 1920s
Poet, novelist, and early
feminist. The Crimson Gate (1910), Suffragette Sally (1911, reprinted
1984 as The Suffragettes), and Mr Jones and the Governess and Other
Stories (1913) all have suffrage themes, while several later works
passionately promoted her anti-vivisection views. Other titles include Concerning Oliver Knox (1888), A Living Epitaph (1890), A Daughter of Music (1894), The Strange Story of Hester Wynne
(1899), A Ladder of Tears (1904), The Guest (1917), The Thunderbolt (1919), and A
Brother of the Shadow (1926).
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Colpitts,
Cicely
see WLLESLEY-SMITH, FRANCES
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COLVILL,
H[ELEN]. H[ESTER]. (8 Mar 1854 – 5 Nov 1941)
(aka
Katharine Wylde)
1880s – 1920s
Author of five early novels under her pseudonym, followed later by several
more under her real name. Titles include A
Dreamer (1880), Mr Bryant's Mistake
(1890), Our Wills and Fates (1897),
The Stepping Stone (1905), Lady Julia's Emerald (1908), The Incubus (1910), and The Lily of Lombardy (1928). She also
translated at least two works by Italian Nobel Prize winner Grazia Deledda.
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COMBE, MRS. KENNETH (15 Jun 1870 – 25
May 1933)
(pseudonym of Theodora Combe, née Williamson)
1900s – 1920s
Author of six novels which explore romantic and family relations. Her first, Cecilia Kirkham's Son (1909), is
partly set in India, and a review of her last, Dilemma (1923) refers to "her usual marked skill in
realistic characterisation." The others are Seekers All (1910), Chief
of the Staff (1914), The Upward
Flight (1919), and In Full Payment
(1920).
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Compton, Clare
see HEWETT, HILDA [MARIAN]
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COMPTON-BURNETT, IVY (5 Jun 1884 – 27 Aug 1969)
1910s – 1970s
Author of 20 eccentric and funny novels that unfold almost entirely in
formal, unrealistic dialogue—"claustrophobic in mood and concerned with
the tyranny of family life," according to ODNB. Although her books have been out of print off and on for
the fifty years since her death, she has consistently been taken seriously by
critics and scholars, and most of her books have now been released in e-book
format. A House and Its Head (1935)
and Manservant and Maidservant
(1947) are often considered to be among her best. She disowned her first,
more traditional and autobiographical novel, Dolores (1911). More Women
Than Men (1933) takes place in a girls' school. The other titles are Pastors and Masters (1925), Brothers and Sisters (1929), Men and Wives (1931), Daughters and Sons (1937), A Family and a Fortune (1939), Parents and Children (1941), Elders and Betters (1944), Two Worlds and Their Ways (1949), Darkness and Day (1951), The Present and the Past (1953), Mother and Son (1955), A Father and His Fate (1957), A Heritage and Its History (1959), The Mighty and Their Fall (1961), A God and His Gifts (1963), and The Last and the First (1971). I've
written about Dame Ivy here, and Simon at Stuck in a
Book has also written about her on several occasions. Compton-Burnett once
quipped about the difficulty of her work, "My books are hard not to put
down."
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COMSTOCK, CAROLINE (dates unknown)
1950s
Unidentified author of a single mystery novel, The Bandar-Log Murder (1956), subtitled "A Museum Street
Thriller." The Observer said
it was a "[c]hattily readable little London mystery set among the
futilitarian, un-dead, neo-delinquent, mews-dwelling, contemporary
youth."
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COMYNS, BARBARA (27 Dec 1907 – 14 Jul 1992)
(pseudonym of Barbara
Irene Veronica Comyns Carr, née Bayley, first married name Pemberton)
1940s – 1980s
Author of ten novels known for their dark humor and morbid perspectives on
childhood. Who Was Changed and Who Was
Dead (1955), for example, is set in a Warwickshire village which faces
first a major flood and then an outbreak of madness, all told hilariously
from the perspective of a child. Her debut, Sisters by a River (1947), began as a memoir of her own
childhood, written to entertain her children. Spelling was not Comyns' strong
suit, and her publisher chose to leave her quirky spellings intact, a
decision that reportedly irritated her but ensured the book's notoriety. Her
late novel Mr. Fox (1987) is set
during World War II and is based on her time, following the breakup of her
first marriage, sharing a home with a disreputable man who inspired the title
character. Her other novels are Our
Spoons Came from Woolworth's (1950), The
Vet's Daughter (1959), The Skin
Chairs (1962), Birds in Tiny Cages
(1964), A Touch of Mistletoe
(1967), The Juniper Tree (1985),
and The House of Dolls (1989).
Comyns and her husband lived for 18 years in Spain, and her memoir Out of the Red and Into the Blue
(1960), deals with this period. I've written about her work here.
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Connor, Elizabeth
see TROY, UNA
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CONNOCK, MARION [TERESA] (4 Feb 1905 – 25 Mar 1994)
(née Mogg)
1950s – 1960s
Author of two children's titles—Treasure
in the Dark (1957), described by a bookseller as about "a family
come to live in a centuries-old manor house on the Cornish coast with their
soldier father & French Resistance heroine mother", and The Boy from Spain (1963), about the
young son of a Spanish Civil War hero. In the 1970s, she also published
biographies of Precious McKenzie and Nadia Comaneci.
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CONQUEST, JOAN (15 Sept 1876 – 23 Oct 1941)
(pseudonym of Mary Eliza
[later Louise] Gripper, married names Martin-Nicholson and Cooke, aka Sister
Martin-Nicholson)
1920s – 1940s
Author of more
than two dozen romantic novels, generally set in exotic locales or featuring
racial difference as their scandalous element. Some feature supernatural
themes of curses, spirits, etc. Titles include Desert Love (1920) and its sequel Hawk of Egypt (1922), The
Street of Many Arches (1924), Crumbling
Walls (1927), Chastity (1929), Harem Love (1930), Love Triumphant (1933), Jewels in the Dust (1937), Simoom (1939), and Us Lonely Fellers! (1941). She had
earlier published a WWI memoir, My
Experiences on Three Fronts (1916) under her Sister Martin-Nicholson
pseudonym.
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CONSTANDUROS, MABEL (29 Mar 1880 – 8 Feb 1957)
(née Tilling)
1920s – 1940s
Actress best known for voicing multiple members of
the Buggins family in radio broadcasts spanning 1928-1948. Constanduros was
also an enormously prolific playwright and author of several novels,
including The Bugginses (1928), The Sweep and the Daffodil (1930), Mrs. Buggins Calls (1936), Poison Flower (1937), Down Mangel Street (1938), A Nice Fire in the Drawing Room: A Story
About Ordinary People (1939), Grandma
(1939), 'Anging Round Pubs (1940), So They Were Married (1942), and On the Run (1943). Her memoir is Shreds & Patches: An Autobiography
(1940).
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Constantine, Murray
see BURDEKIN, KATHARINE
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Conway, Celine
see WARREN, LILLIAN
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Conway, Laura
see ANSLE, DOROTHY PHOEBE
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CONYERS, [MINNIE] DOROTHEA [SPAIGHT] (18
Nov 1869 – 25 May 1949)
(née Blood-Smyth, later married name White)
1900s – 1940s
Author of more than 50 works of fiction described by OCEF as "cheerful romances, in which the subjects of Ireland
and hunting recur." Her many titles include The Thorn Bit (1900), The
Boy, Some Horses, and a Girl: A Tale of an Irish Trip (1903), Aunt Jane and Uncle James (1908), The Arrival of Antony (1912), The Financing of Fiona (1916), Uncle Pierce's Legacy (1920), The Two Maureens (1924), Managing Ariadne (1931), The Elf (1936), Gulls at Rossnacorey (1939), A
Kiss for a Whip (1948), and The
Witch's Samples (1950). Her memoir is Sporting
Reminiscences (1920).
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COOKE, JEAN [HESTER] (18 Jul 1905 – 18 Aug 1980)
(married name Buggs)
1930s
Author of two novels, Now Rests that
Unquiet Heart (1933) and Song
Without Music (1935), about which little information is available. In
1939 she was working in London as an editorial assistant.
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COOKE, SHIRLEY (27 Aug 1903 – 18 Dec
1991)
(pseudonym of Constance Irene Poppy Bacon, married
names Richard and Sartoris)
1920s – 1930s
Author of three adult novels about which details are scarce—Grape Fruit (1927), Mottled Marble (1928), and The Sedgwicks (1929)—and one
additional title, Woolly Bear
(1934), which appears to be for small children. Mottled Marble, according to a publisher blurb, deals with a
woman whose disappointment in love "transforms her into a subtle
malevolent woman who causes incredible trouble."
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COOKSON, CATHERINE [ANN] (20 Jun 1906 – 11 Jun 1998)
(née Davies, aka Catherine
Marchant)
1950s – 1990s
The bestselling
author in England for many years, Cookson published more than seventy works
of fiction in all, including historical romances, children's books, and
memoirs. In the 1990s, many of her books were adapted for British TV,
beginning with The Fifteen Streets
(1952). Other novels include Kate
Hannigan (1950), Maggie Rowan (1954), Slinky Jane (1959), Heritage
of Folly (1963), Hannah Massey (1964), Evil at Roger's Cross
(1965), The Nice Bloke (1969), The Mallen Streak (1973), Go
Tell It to Mrs. Golightly (1977), The Black Velvet Gown (1984), The
Wingless Bird (1990), and Justice Is a Woman (1994). Her memoir is
Our Kate: An Autobiography (1969).
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COOPER, AGNES ROSEMARY (25 Nov 1911 –
7 Oct 1989)
(married name Gould, aka Ramsay Bell [with Mary WELLER])
1930s
Co-author, with Mary WELLER, of four pseudonymous novels—Dragon Under Ground (1937), described as "a pleasantly told
yet thrilling tale of Christmas adventure," To Joanna (1938), Dangerous
Promise (1939), and The Lake of
Ghosts (1940), set in the Apennines with an archaeologist heroine.
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COOPER, BARBARA [TAMAR] (15 Sept 1905 – 19 May 1981)
1930s
Sister of novelists Lettice COOPER and Leonard Cooper. Reviewer and author of
three novels—Sweet Chariot (1931),
subtitled "The Story of a Coward" and apparently set during the
American Civil War, Two Walk Together
(1935), about which details are lacking except that the publisher described
it as about "the clask between sophistication and an open-air country
life", and The Light of Other Days
(1939), in which an elderly man reminisces about his youth during the
Regency, including cameos from Lord Byron, Caroline Lamb, and John Keats. The
latter seems to have been the most widely and positively reviewed. Barbara
and her sister lived together in London for much of their adult lives.
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COOPER, GWLADYS DOROTHY (27 Jun 1912 - 1981)
(aka Shirley Saville, Jill Newland, Margaret Mason,
Diana Carter, Carmen Castillo, Irene Dickens, Carol Grant, Linda Green)
1930s, 1960s – 1970s
Author of romantic novels under a number of pseudonyms. Presumably Betty's Mistake (1937), as Margaret
Mason, was her first, but she seems not to have published again (or perhaps
published under unknown pseudonyms) until 1960, when no fewer than five
novels appeared under various pseudonyms. Other titles include Moon Over Morocco (1960), Fabric Pictures (1961), Love's Horizon (1961), Malice in the Sun (1962), Quest for Love (1968), and Moroccan Magic (1972).
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COOPER, LETTICE [ULPHA] (3 Sept 1897 – 24 Jul 1994)
1920s – 1980s
Sister of
Barbara COOPER and Leonard Cooper, also novelists. Author of 20 novels
spanning more than 60 years. The first four—The Lighted Room (1925), The
Old Fox (1927), Good Venture
(1928), and Likewise the Lyon
(1928)—were historical in subject. The ninth, The New House (1936), a poignant tale of a family moving
house, was reprinted by Persephone in 2004, at which time it was compared to
the work of Anita Brookner. National
Provincial (1938) is a South Riding-esque bestseller about a fictional town
that might be Leeds or Sheffield. It was compared by another reviewer to
George Eliot's Middlemarch. Black Bethlehem (1947), Cooper's first
post-WWII fiction, is comprised of three stories, two with the backdrop of
was—one about an injured war hero adapting to home life, the other about a
woman who takes in a shady refugee. Fenny
(1953), set before and after the war in Florence, follows a young girl from
her arrival in Italy as a governess through turbulent events both personal
and political. Three of Cooper's novels belong to some extent to the
mystery/thriller genre—A Certain
Compass (1960), in which a young wife investigates her husband's supposed
suicide in Italy, Tea on Sunday
(1973), apparently a more straightforward detective novel, and Unusual Behavior (1986), about police
surveilling a London suburb to find reported IRA radicals. Her other novels
are The Ship of Truth (1930), Private Enterprise (1931), Hark to Rover! (1933), We Have Come to a Country (1935), Three Lives (1957), The Double Heart (1962), Late in the Afternoon (1971), Snow and Roses (1976), and Desirable Residence (1980). Cooper
also wrote several books for children, mostly in the 1960s, as well as
biographies for young readers.
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COOPER, [MARY] WENDY (WENDALINE) (6 Dec 1919 - 2004)
(née Lowe, full married
name Jack Cooper)
1950s
Journalist, writer for television and radio, and children's author. Her four
children's titles—The Laughing Lady
(1957), about the disappearance of a famous painting, Alibi Children (1958), The
Cat Strikes at Night (1959), and Disappearing
Diamonds (1960)—were mystery and adventure stories. The first two at
least seem to have been novelizations of BBC television productions. She
contributed articles to numerous major periodicals, and published several
books about women and science.
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CORBETT, MRS. GEORGE (1846 - 1930)
(pseudonym of Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett)
1880s – 1920s
Novelist and crime writer, many of whose works appeared in periodicals and
have not been fully documented. Known works include The Missing Note (1881), the utopic New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future (1890), A Mere Masquerader (1895), The Marriage Market (1905), In Society's Whirlpool (1920), The Lucy Talisman (1921), and An Unwilling Husband (1922). Although
several sources mention that she wrote crime or mystery novels, the only one
I can positively identify as such is When
the Sea Gives Up Its Dead: A Thrilling Detective Story (1894).
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CORBOULD, DOROTHEA MARY (27 Sept 1849
– 15 Dec 1928)
(real name apparently Dorathea)
1880s – 1920s
Author of three novels—Loyal Hearts
(1883), When Love Speaks (1909),
and From Dark to Dawn (1928)—and
one children's title, The Complete Tale
of Humpty Dumpty (1914).
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CORDEUX, KATE MARION (21 Nov 1862 – 6 Oct 1962)
(aka Daniel Dormer)
1880s – 1930
Author of three early pseudonymous novels—Out
of the Mists (1886), The
Mesmerist's Secret (1888), and Steven
Vigil (1891)—and three later works under her own name—The King's Tryst (1920), The Romance of Mary the Blessed
(1927), and A Garland for Ashes
(1930).
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CORELLI, MARIE (1 May 1855 – 21 Apr
1924)
(pseudonym of Mary Mackay)
1880s – 1920s
Massively successful popular novelist whose 30+ novels sometimes featured
mystical or religious themes. ODNB
notes that two of her most successful works, Thelma (1887) and The
Sorrows of Satan (1895), had, by the time of her death, gone through 56
and 60 editions respectively. Other famous works are A Romance of Two Worlds (1886), Wormwood (1890), about absinthe addiction, My Wonderful Wife (1890), which satirized the "New
Woman" phenomenon, The Soul of
Lilith (1892), a retelling of Frankenstein, Barabbas: a Dream of the World's Tragedy (1893), a melodramatic
retelling of the crucifixion, and The
Devil's Motor (1910), which also utilized Christian mythology. She
continued to publish fiction, including Innocent:
Her Fancy and His Fact (1914), The
Young Diana: An Experience of the Future (1918), and The Secret Power (1921), until just before her death.
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CORKE, HELEN (26 Jan 1882 – 16 May 1978)
1930s
Biographer,
historian, memoirist, and author of one novel, Neutral Ground (1933). Part of the novel was based on her much
earlier diary of a tragic love affair, written 1910-1912, which was
apparently also the inspiration for D. H. Lawrence's The Trespasser. She later published memoirs of Lawrence and his
lover Jessie Chambers, as well as an autobiography, In Our Infancy (1975).
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CORNER, ANNE [ELIZABETH] (1886 – 17 Nov 1930)
(née Squire)
1920s
Suffragist, politician, and author of at least one novel—Deeper Yet (1929), about a woman trying to help her husband fight
drug addiction resulting from his WWI experiences. A children's title, Broomstick Nights (1930), expanded on
the stories behind well-known nursery rhymes. Her obituary said she was the
author of two novels in addition to the children's book, but I can find no
trace of a second title. Corner died unexpectedly following a surgery. She
was the sister of author J. C. Squire.
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Cornewall,
Lewis
see TRAFFORD-TAUNTON, [EMILY]
WINIFRIDE
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CORNISH,
DOROTHY HELEN (18 Dec 1894 – 20 Nov 1995)
1940s
Author of a single novel, These
Were the Brontës (1940), heavily advertised in the early days of World
War II, which focused on Charlotte's life but also "dwells fully and
charmingly … upon life in the Haworth home."
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CORNISH,
HEATHER
(dates unknown)
1940s
Untraced author of a single girls' school story, Dumps Takes Charge (1948).
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CORNISH,
THEODORA
(dates unknown)
1910s
Untraced author of a single girls' school story, One Term: A Tale of Manor House School (1910). She may have been
in the medical profession. Alternatively, the name could be a pseudonym of
Theodore Cornish, a male author of the time.
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CORNWALLIS, KAY (17 Apr 1888 – 2 Aug 1969)
(pseudonym of Irene
Wallis, married name Jones)
1930s
Author of two novels—Jeopardy Incurred (1933) and Travel
Stained (1934). The latter is about an English family relocating to
Boston, and the nearly-disastrous flirtation of the young wife.
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Cory, Caroline
see FREEMAN, KATHLEEN
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COSENS,
MONICA (26 Mar 1888 – 18 Aug 1973)
1910s – 1920s
Author of a story collection, The Elfin Cobbler and Other Stories of Connaught (1914), and a
gung-ho World War I memoir, Lloyd
George's Munition Girls (1916), which paints a humorous but significant
portrait of one area of women's war experience. She also wrote several
plays and two children's titles—The Dancing Child (1913) and Wee Men (1923)—in collaboration with
Brenda GIRVIN. Early in World War II, she published Evacuation: A Social Revolution (1940).
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COST, MARCH (19 Apr 1897 – 7 Feb 1973)
(pseudonym of Margaret
Mackie Morrison, aka Peggy Morrison, aka Margaret Morrison)
1920s – 1970s
Author of more than three dozen works of fiction, including several
children's titles. Best known for A Man
Called Luke (1932), about a physician who may be reincarnated, and for The Hour Awaits (1952), which traces
24 hours spent in London by a princess from a Tyrolean kingdom, and its
sequel, Invitation from Minerva
(1954). Other novels under the Cost pseudonym include The Dark Glass (1935), The
Dark Star (1939), Rachel: An
Interpretation (1947), The Bespoken
Mile (1950), By the Angel,
Islington (1955), A Woman of
Letters (1959), The Year of the
Yield (1965), and A Key to Laurels
(1972). Under her real name, she appears to have written lighter fiction,
such as Flying High (1943) and Wider Horizons (1952), about an air
hostess who finds love, and, in collaboration with Pamela TULK-HART, Paid To Be Safe (1948), about the
World War II Air Transport Auxiliary. Others under her own name include Written for Elizabeth (1934), Sally Strange (1937), Angles (1939), The Mavis Hut (1942), Circles
(1945), Bring Me a Sword (1951),
and The Undaunted (1956). I've
mentioned Cost in passing here and here.
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COSTIE, CHRISTINA MCKAY (6 Aug 1902 – 23 Jun 1967)
1950s
Scottish author of dialect tales. Although she apparently published only one
book, Benjie's Bodle and Other Orkney
Dialect Tales (1956), in her lifetime, two more collections appeared
after her death—The Collected Orkney
Dialect Tales of C.M. Costie (1976) and Wullie o' Skipigoe, or, The True Story of the Harray Crab and Other
Orkney Dialect Poems (1997)—and she has recently received some critical
attention.
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Cotman, D. J.
see BOWES-LYON, LILIAN
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COTTERELL, CONSTANCE [ANNIE MARY] (12 Sept 1864 – 3 Mar 1947)
1880s – 1930s
Author of eight novels—Strange Gods
(1889), Tempe (1893), An Impossible Person (1896), "Love Is Not So Light"
(1898), The Virgin and the Scales
(1905), The Honest Trespass (1911),
The Perpetual Choice (1915), and Chain the Unicorn (1933). In The Honest Trespass, a young woman
whose husband is in a mental hospital is lured into a relationship with
another man.
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COTTON, CATHERINE [MARY] (1 Apr 1880 –
23 Feb 1973)
(née Cotton)
1920s
Untraced author of three novels—Experience
(1922), The Polite Paupers (1929),
and Water Into Wine (1930)—as well
as a distressing-sounding text called Your
Sacred Body (1933), published by the Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge. She may have married a cousin, as it appears that her maiden and
married names were the same.
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COUCH, GRACE (dates unknown)
1940s
Untraced co-author, with Deirdre O'BRIEN, of a single girls' school story, New Girls at Lowmead (1945), and
author of several books for younger children, some of which she also
illustrated.
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Courtney,
Christine
see WESTMARLAND, ETHEL LOUISA
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COURTNEY, GWENDOLINE (23 Sept 1911 – 12 Mar 1996)
1930s – 1950s
Cousin of
Phyllis Irene NORRIS and author of at least fourteen children's tales,
including school and family stories. Thirteen books were published in her
lifetime—Torley Grange (1935), The Grenville Garrison (1940), The Denehurst Secret Service (1940), Well Done, Denehurst! (1941), Sally's Family (1946), Stepmother (1948, aka Those Verney Girls, aka Elizabeth of the Garret Theatre), A Coronet for Cathie (1950), Long Barrow (1950, aka The Farm on the Downs), At School with the Stanhopes (1951), The Girls of Friar's Rise (1952), The Chiltons (1953), The Wild Lorings at School (1954), and
The Wild Lorings—Detectives!
(1956). In 2011, Girls Gone By Publishers released Mermaid House (1953), an additional novel only previously published
in serial form. I've discussed her work several times—see here—and Barbara at Call Me Madam discussed Courtney here.
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COWDROY, JOAN A[LICE]. (16 Sept 1884 – 14 Aug 1946)
1920s – 1940s
Author of at least 20 novels, some or all of them mysteries. Titles include Brothers-In-Love (1922), The Inscrutable Secretary (1924), The Immortal (1927), The Mystery of Sett (1930), Watch Mr Moh! (1931), Murder of Lydia (1933), Murder Unsuspected (1936), Framed Evidence (1936), Our Miss Flower (1937), Death Has No Tongue (1938), Merry-Go-Round (1940), Murder Out of Court (1944), and Morris Dance (1946).
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COWEN, FRANCES [GERTRUDE] (27 Dec 1901 - 1992)
(married name Munthe, aka
Eleanor Hyde)
1920s – 1980s
Author of more than a dozen children’s titles early in her career, followed
by around 40 adult novels beginning in the 1960s. Most of her books include
an element of suspense. Among her children's titles are In the Clutch of the Green Hand (1929), The Milhurst Mystery (1933), The
Perilous Adventure (1936), The Girl
Who Knew Too Much (1940), Mystery
at the Walled House (1951), Clover
Cottage (1958), The Secret of
Grange Farm (1961), and The Secret
of the Loch (1963). Adult titles include thrillers under her own name and
historical mysteries under the name Eleanor Hyde. Among the former are A Step in the Dark (1962), Scented Danger (1966), The Daylight Fear (1969), The Curse of the Clodaghs (1973), The Medusa Connection (1976), and Sunrise at Even (1982). Among the
latter are Tudor Masquerade (1972),
Tudor Mayhem (1973), Tudor Myth (1976), Tudor Murder (1977), and Tudor Mausoleum (1977).
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COWLIN, DOROTHY (16 Aug 1911 – 10 Jan 2010)
(married name Whalley)
1940s – 1950s
Biographer and author of eight novels showing some influence from Freud.
Titles are Penny to Spend (1941), Winter
Solstice (1942), The Holly and the
Ivy (1950), The Slow Train Home (1951), Rowanberry Wine (1952), An
End and a Beginning (1954), Draw
the Well Dry (1955), and The Pair
of Them (1956). Later in her career she published biographies of Gertrude
Bell, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Cleopatra.
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COWPER, E[DITH]. E[LIZA]. (1859 – 18 Nov 1933)
(née Cadogan, married name
Cooper)
1890s – 1930s
Author of school stories, Guide stories, and other mystery and adventure
tales "in the Bessie Marchant tradition," according to Sims and
Clare. School stories are The Mystery
Term (1923) and The Troublesome
Term (1926). The former is the first of a series including The Holiday School (1927), The Fifth Form Adventurers (1929), and
The Invincible Fifth (1930), but
these titles are not primarily school-related. Other books include Theckla Jansen: The Story of a Lonely Girl
(1899), Calder Creek: A Story of
Smuggling on the South Coast (1903), The
Invaders of Fairford (1907), The
Island of Rushes: The Strange Story of a Holiday Mystery (1912), Jane in Command: The Story of a Girl's War
Work and Its Strange Results (1917), The
White Witch of Rosel (1922), Peterina
on the Rescue Trail (1928), and Elsie
and the Grey Thief (1933).
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COX, LEWIS (15 Nov 1889 – 10 Aug 1983)
(pseudonym of Euphrasia Emeline Cox, née Lewis, aka
Bridget Parsons)
1920s – 1970s
Author of well over 100 romantic novels, including King's Yellow (1925), Arab
(1930), As Young as Spring-Time
(1933), April Child (1937), Phantom Rival (1939), Radiant and Reckless (1945), Sandboy (1948), Venetian Fantasy (1956), A
Pennyworth of Paradise (1961), The
Elegant Web (1964), and Silver
Cherries (1972). She published two novels in the 1930s under her Parsons
pseudonym.
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COXHEAD, [EILEEN] ELIZABETH (18 Feb 1909 – 16 Sept 1979)
1930s – 1960s
Biographer and author of ten novels, including One Green Bottle (1951), discussed here. The other novels are The Street of Shadows (1934), June in Skye (1938), A Wind in the West (1949), A Play Toward (1952), The Midlanders (1953), The Figure in the Mist (1955), The Friend in Need (1957), The House in the Heart (1959), and The Thankless Muse (1967), the last
apparently based on a real-life drama from late in the life of William Butler
Yeats. She also published biographies of the likes of Lady Gregory and Constance
Spry. I've written about her work a couple of times—see here.
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Coxon, Mrs. Sydney
see HINE, MURIEL
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COYLE, KATHLEEN (23 Oct 1886 – 25 Mar
1952)
(married name O'Meagher)
1920s – 1940s
Irish novelist and memoirist who lived in the U.S. in later years. Her
memoirs A Flock of Birds (1930) and
The Magical Realm (1943) were
reprinted in the 1990s, as was Liv
(1928), a novel about a young woman who seeks to expand her horizons via a
trip to Paris. Other fiction includes Piccadilly
(1923), The Widow's House (1924), Youth in the Saddle (1927, aka Shule Agra), It Is Better to Tell (1927), There
Is a Door (1931), The French
Husband (1932), The Skeleton
(1933), Undue Fulfillment (1934), Morning Comes Early (1934), Brittany Summer (1940), Who Dwell with Wonder (1940), Immortal Ease (1941), and To Hold Against Famine (1942).
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CRADOCK, FANNY (26 Feb 1909 – 27 Dec 1994)
(pseudonym of Phyllis Nan
Sortain Pechey, aka Frances Dale)
1940s – 1980s
Theatrical television chef and cookbook author who also wrote numerous novels
and children's books—initially using her Frances Dale pseudonym, later using
the name of her television persona. Titles include Scorpion's Suicide (1942), Women
Must Wait (1944), My Seed, Thy
Harvest (1946), O Daughter of
Babylon (1947), The Eternal Echo
(1950), and a popular series beginning with The Lormes of Castle Rising (1975). Her television success
trailed off following her scathing critique of the cooking of a housewife
contest-winner on a 1976 BBC program.
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CRAIK, M[ARIE]. SYLVIA (19 Mar 1884 – 14 Nov 1955)
(née Robson)
1930s
Author of at least two novels of the 1930s—The Splendid Smile (1930) and Petronel's
Island (1931).
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CRAN, [EDITH] MARION (1875 – 2 Sept 1942)
(née Dudley, other married
names Dunn and Hurd-Wood)
1930s
Widely known gardening writer and first woman gardening broadcaster (with her
BBC Gardening Chats, beginning in 1923), as well as the author of two novels.
The Lusty Pal (1930), first serialized
in Good Housekeeping, appears to be
more or less about a girl who couldn't say no, while Piper's Lay deals with the love story between a dressmaker and a
water-diviner. Cran sometimes combined memoir and gardening, as in her debut,
The Garden of Ignorance (1913),
about her hit-or-miss early attempts at creating a garden, and The Story of My Ruin (1924), about
both the restoration of her house and the failure of her marriage. Though not
a household name today, Cran was famous enough to figure in a 1934 comic
rhyme by Reginald Arkell: "Beverley Nicholls and Marion Cran / Hadn’t
been born when the world began / That is the reason I must confess / Why the
Garden of Eden was not a success."
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CRANSTON, JANE (dates unknown)
1950s
Untraced author of a single girls' school story, First-Term Rebel (1955).
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Craven,
Helen
see FORBES, HELEN [EMILY]
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CRAWFORD, ISABEL (dates unknown)
1920s – 1930s
Untraced author of four girls' school stories. Phoebe's First Term (1928) and Phoebe & Company (1931) focus on a single character, while Willowmeads (1932) and Lola's Exploration (1933) tell two
separate stories set at a single school. Sims and Clare appreciated
Crawford's humor.
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Crawford, Mary
see NICHOLSON, MARY
(1908-1995)
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CRAWFORD, MAUDE [MORTON LEIGH] (27
Sept 1874 - 1956)
1920s – 1930s
Author of more than 20 romantic novels, and apparently one much earlier work,
Meg (1899). Titles include The Fruit of Evil (1920), Roses in the Snow (1921), Kismet (1922), Peggy Up in Arms (1924), Butterfly
Peg (1925), Nan the Faithful
(1925), The Girl-Haunted Man
(1926), For Her Sister's Sake
(1927), The Man from the Past
(1929), Not a Fool (1933), Ashamed of the Shop (1933), and The Sunshine Girl (1933).
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CREESE, [DORIS] BETHEA (21 Sept 1897 – 22 Apr 1986)
1950s - 1970
Journalist and author of more than a dozen Mills and Boon romances. Titles
include The Family Face (1950), The Chequered Flag (1952), Evergreen Oak (1955), Glorious Haven (1958), Beauty Queen (1960), Irish Rose (1964), and King of Hearts (1967). She also
published the non-fiction Careers in
Catering and Domestic Science (1965) for Bodley Head.
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CRESSWELL, HELEN (11 Jul 1934 – 26
Sept 2005)
Poet, television screenwriter, and prolific children's author. Her first
book, Sonya-by-the-Shore (1960),
just qualifies her for this list. Others include The Piemakers (1967), three Carnegie Award runners-up, The Night Watchmen (1969), Up the Pier (1971), and The Bongleweed (1973), and two popular
book series, Lizzie Dripping and The Bagthorpe Saga.
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CREWE, CLAIRE (dates unknown)
Untraced author of a single romantic novel, The Circus Girl (1927).
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Crichton, Lucilla
see ANDREWS, LUCILLA
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CRISPE, WINIFRED [IDA GERTRUY] (22 May 1872 – 26 Aug 1955)
1900s, 1930s (?)
Author of three early novels—Snares
(1904), Corry Thorndike (1908), and
Golden Aphrodite (1909)—and what
seems to be one more three decades later, The
Gospel of Elimination (1939).
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CROCKETT, [RUTH MARY] RUTHERFORD (10
Aug 1888 – 3 Aug 1957)
1920s
Daughter of Scottish novelist Samuel Rutherford Crockett and author of two
novels of her own—A Gay Lover
(1925), a humorous romance set partly in Scotland, and its sequel, Safety Last (1926).
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CROFT, FRANCES (15 May 1905 – 9 Apr 1986)
(pseudonym of Kathleen
Rose Margaret Morrison, née Eales)
1930s
Author of a single novel, The Silken Skin
(1937), about which the Lancashire
Evening Post said, "Scenes in Italy and in a beauty shop, young life
in a London boarding house, love affairs and disillusionment, are woven into
a gay pattern in a way that promises well for the author's future success as
a writer of light fiction."
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CROKER, B[ITHIA]. M[ARY]. (28 May 1849 – 20 Oct 1920)
(née Sheppard)
1880s – 1910s
Author of more than 40 books, including many "Anglo-Indian
romances" described as "witty and fast-moving" (OCEF), which explore the complexities
of life and love in India, where she lived for many years, as well as stories
of ghosts and the supernatural. Other of her novels were set in Ireland,
Burma, Egypt, Australia, and various European locales. Fiction includes Proper Pride (1882), Pretty Miss Neville (1883), Village Tales and Jungle Tragedies
(1895), Beyond the Pale (1897), Angel (1901), The Cat's Paw (1902), The
Company's Servant (1907), Katherine
the Arrogant (1909), Lismoyle
(1914), and The Road to Mandalay
(1917). Croker is said to have used her daughter as a model for some of her
heroines.
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CROLY, ELIZABETH (6 Feb 1897 – 18 Feb
1953)
(pseudonym of Janet Muriel Begbie, married name
Farwell)
1920s
Author of two works of children's fiction, The Street that Ran Away (1921) and A Sailing We Will Go (1922), as well as a collection of
children's poetry, The Lucky Tub (1922),
a play called Forbidden Revels
(1925), and two travel books, Round
About Monte Carlo (1925), and The
Lure of the New Forest (1925).
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Cromer, Ruby
see BARING, RUBY [FLORENCE
MARY]
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Crompton,
Margaret
see MAIR, MARGARET [NORAH]
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CROMPTON, RICHMAL (15 Nov 1890 – 11 Jan 1969)
(pseudonym of Richmal
Crompton Lamburn)
1920s – 1960s
Best known for Just William (1922)
and dozens of subsequent books about the adventures of an energetic,
mischievous schoolboy, which by the mid-1990s had sold 10 million copies, and
which according to ODNB
"contained sharp social observation of suburban mores, and have been a
good deal quarried by social historians." There have also been film,
television, and radio adaptations of the series. At one point, Crompton
referred to the series as a "Frankenstein's monster" for its
tendency to prevent attention from being paid to her 40 novels for adults.
These include Family Roundabout
(1948), which was reprinted by Persephone, three titles reprinted by
Greyladies—Leadon Hill (1927), Mrs Frensham Describes a Circle
(1942), and Matty and the Dearingroydes
(1956)—and a dozen or so titles now available in e-book format from Bello
Books. Other novels include The Innermost
Room (1923), The House (1926,
published in the U.S. as Dread Dwelling),
Felicity Stands By (1928), Marriage of Hermione (1932), The Holiday (1933), Journeying Wave (1938), Steffan Green (1940), Frost at Morning (1950), Four in Exile (1954), and The Inheritor (1960). Mary Cadogan
wrote a short biography called Richmal
Crompton: The Woman Behind William (1986). I've written about Crompton here.
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CRONE, ANNE (1915 – 25 Oct 1972)
1940s – 1950s
Author of three novels, the most acclaimed of which, Bridie Steen (1948), is a tragedy centering on an Irish heroine
caught between non-Irish Protestants on one side of her family and Irish
Catholics on the other. Her other novels are This Pleasant Lea (1951) and My
Heart and I (1955).
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CROOME, HONOR (6 Jul 1908 – 29 Sept 1960)
(full name Honoria Renée Minturn Croome, née Scott)
1940s – 1950s
Journalist, economist, and author of five novels. Her first three novels were
written while living in Canada during WWII. O Western Wind (1945), based on her family's own experiences of
getting settled in the U.S. and then Canada, was highly praised by Elizabeth
Bowen. You've Gone Astray (1945) is
about two friends in the 1930s up to the beginning of the war, while The Faithless Mirror (1946), set in
wartime Ottawa, deals with difficulties between a brother and sister. The Mountain and the Molehill (1955),
set in a Swiss girls' school, was based in part on Croome's own experiences.
And The Forgotten Place (1957)
deals with a woman coming to terms with her childhood by visiting her
mother's country house, now divided into flats. Croome also published several
highly-regarded introductory texts on economics, and for a time in the 1930s,
she was political secretary to first female MP Nancy Astor.
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CROSBIE, MARY (26 Mar 1876 – 24 Feb 1958)
(pseudonym of Muriel Maud
D'Oyley)
1900s – 1920s
Author of seven novels—Disciples
(1907), Kinsmen's Clay (1910), Bridget Considine (1914), Escapade (1917), There and Back Again (1927), Rekindled
Fires (1929), and The Old Road
(1929). I reviewed There and Back Again,
about a mother returning to her husband and children after abandoning them
years before, here.
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CROSS, BRENDA (1919 – 23 Dec 2013)
(née Stenning, later
married name Colloms, aka B. Cross, aka Brenda Hughes)
1950s
Journalist, film critic for Picturegoer
magazine, and author of two school stories featuring a movie star's
daughter—Barbara's Worst Term
(1950) and Barbara in the Lower Fifth
(1953)—which Sims and Clare found reminiscent of Nancy Breary. She also
published The Film Hamlet: A Record of
Its Production (1948) as well as various biographical and historical
works for both adults and children.
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CROSS, MARGARET [BESSIE] (2 Jun 1867 –
25 Mar 1950)
1890s – 1910s
Playwright and author of at least 10 novels, possibly romantic in theme,
including Thyme and Rue (1890), Stolen Honey (1892), The Saffron Robe (1893), Newly Fashioned (1895), Blind Bats (1897), Love and Olivia (1899), Richard's Affair (1904), A Question of Means (1909), Opportunity (1910), and Up to Perrin's (1912). Later in life
she published The Story of the Red
Cross (1936).
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CROSS, VICTORIA (1 Oct 1868 – 2 Aug 1952)
(pseudonym of Annie Sophie
Cory)
1890s – 1930s
Author of more than two dozen novels, most famously her titillating
potboilers of the "New Woman"
period, including The Woman Who Didn't
(1895) and Five Nights (1908). Anna Lombard (1901), set in India,
garnered from one critic an odd comparison to Conrad's Heart of Darkness. She apparently struggled to maintain her
scandalousness as social values changed. Her late novel, A Husband's Holiday (1932), is "about a prim woman who disguises
herself as a coarse one to win her husband back, only to realize that he is
not worth it" (ODNB). Martha Brown, MP (1935) is a futurist
tale of a world where women are in charge. Others include A Girl of the Klondike (1899), The Religion of Evelyn Hastings
(1905), Life's Shop Window (1907), Over Life's Edge (1921), Electric Love (1929), and The Girl in the Studio (1934).
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CROY, CATHERINE (dates unknown)
1930s
Untraced author of two novels, In Silks
She Goes (1933) and The Hungry
Locusts (1934), which focus on a woman and her illegitimate son—the first
set around the turn of the century and the second taking up the story just
after World War I.
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CULLINGFORD, GUY (10 Jan 1907 - 2000)
(pseudonym of Alice Constance Lindsay Taylor, née
Dowdy)
1940s – 1990s
Author of about a dozen mystery novels, all but the first, Murder with Relish (1948), under her
pseudonym. The others are If Wishes
were Hearses (1952), Post Mortem
(1953), Conjurer's Coffin (1954), Framed for Hanging (1959), A Touch of Drama (1960), Third Party Risk (1962), The Whipping Boys (1964), Brink of Disaster (1964), The Stylist (1968), The Bread and Butter Miss (1979), and Bother at the Barbican (1991). An
additional title, Thirteen Short
Stories (1993) is listed on a German Wikipedia page, but not in the
British Library or Worldcat. Most of her titles have been released as
e-books.
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CUMMING, PRIMROSE [AMY] (7 Apr 1915 – 22
Aug 2004)
1930s – 1960s
Author of 20 children's
titles, most famously her horse books, including Silver Snaffles (1937, reprinted by Fidra), Four Rode
Home (1951), and No Place For Ponies (1954). Owls Castle Farm (1942)
was in part based on her experiences as a Land Girl in World War II. Other
titles include Doney (1934), Rachel of Romney (1939), The
Great Horses (1946), Trouble at Trimbles (1949), The Deep Sea
Horse (1956), The Mystery Trek (1964), and Penny and Pegasus
(1969).
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CUMMINS, GERALDINE [DOROTHY] (24 Jan 1890 – 24 Aug 1969)
1930s, 1950s
Irish novelist, playwright, suffragist, and psychic medium. Author of two
plays for the Abbey Theatre, two novels with feminist themes—The Land They Loved (1919) and Fires of Beltane (1936)—a collection
of stories called Variety Show
(1959), and a memoir, Unseen Adventures
(1951). As a psychic, she claimed to have received messages from a
contemporary of Jesus named Cleophas and from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the
latter of which she forwarded to the American embassy during the latter days
of World War II.
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Cunningham,
Ray
see ARTHUR, FRANCES BROWNE
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CUNYNGHAME, [HELEN] DOROTHY (14 Jul 1892 – 31 Jan 1944)
(née Taylor)
1930s
Author of six novels—The Uttermost Gift
(1932), a psychological drama, Summer's
Lease (1932), The Jade Lotus
(1933), a romance set in Malaya, Dark
Background (1934), Half a House
(1935), and So Much for Charity
(1937).
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CURREY, [HELEN] STELLA (ESTELLA) MARTIN (18 Jul 1907 – 9 Jun 1994)
(née Martin)
1930s – 1950s
Daughter of J. P. Martin, author of the Uncle
series children's books (1964-1973), and niece of Dora Fowler MARTIN.
Playwright, memoirist, and author of five novels. Her debut, Paperchase End
(1934), is about the newspaper business, and the Guardian admired its "deftness and humour" but felt
Currey had overcrowded it with characters. Prelude for Six Flutes (1937) is about a girl assuming the care
of her younger siblings after their parents are killed. Her other novels are Marry We Must (1940), Following Charles (1944), and To the Mountain (1949). She also
published One Woman's Year (1953),
a sort of memoir of a year in the life of a middle-class postwar housewife.
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CURTAYNE, ALICE (6 Nov 1898 - 1981)
(married name Rynne)
1940s
Author of numerous writings about Catholic saints, particularly those
associated with her native Ireland, as well as some on Irish culture more
generally. She also published a single novel, House of Cards (1940).
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Curtin, Philip
see LOWNDES, MARIE BELLOC
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CURTIS, MARGUERITE [HARDING] (1882 - ????)
(married name Felgar)
1900s – 1920s
Author of seven novels, the earliest of which tended to mix religion and the
supernatural. According to OCEF, her
debut, The Bias (1908),
"concerns an experiment conducted on the unconscious person of an orphan
girl by a psychologist who thinks that the bias of women is towards evil and
a doctor who takes the opposite view," while Oh! for an Angel (1911) is about "an evangelist with
mysterious powers to do both good and evil." The others are Marcia: A Transcript from Life (1909),
The Dream Triumphant (1912), The Dividing-Line (1913), and,
following her emigration to the U.S. after marrying an American musician, Debby’s Year (1922) and Billie-Belinda (1923).
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CURTIS, MONICA MARY (1892 – 26 Jun 1956)
1930s
Journalist, translator, and author of a single novel, Landslide (1934), described by SF Encyclopedia as "an Alternate
History tale set in a Europe subtly transformed by a second Great War in the
twentieth century." In World War II, Curtis published Norway and the War (1941).
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Curtis, Peter
see LOFTS, NORAH
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CURTOIS, MARGARET ANNE (1855 – 7 Sept 1932)
1880s – 1920s
Author of around fifteen works of fiction, of which a letter in the Times
said, "they present living and convincing characters, without any taint
of the desire to exploit intellectual fads or foibles." One wonders if
her debut, My Best Pupil (1883),
could be a school story. Two of her books are apparently fairy tales, Chronicles of Elfland: Elf-Knights
(1890) and Chronicles of Elfland:
Elf-Beauties (1908). Other titles include The Story of Meg (1884), Leap
Year (1885), Athlos, of, The Story
of a Life (1886), Tracked
(1888), Jenny: A Village Idyl
(1890), The Romance of a Country
(1893), A Summer in Cornwall
(1913), Nightshade (1921), and In Minden Town (1926). Her books
appear to be extremely scarce now.
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CUTHELL, EDITH E[LLEN]. (27 Jul 1852 – 31 Jan 1929)
(née Foster)
1880s - 1920
Biographer, memoirist, and author of children's fiction and novels. Much of
her work make use of her years of living in India. Most of her fiction
appeared in the 1890s, including the children's books Indian Pets and Playmates (1891), Only a Guard-Room Dog (1892), and In the Mutiny Days (1893) and her novels A Baireuth Pilgrimage (1894), Caught
by a Cook (1895), and Sweet Irish
Eyes (1897). Two additional children's titles, however—Reggy, Queenie and Blot and The Skipper—appeared in 1920,
qualifying her for this list. She also published several biographies in the
1910s.
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