For more information about
this list, please see the introduction, linked below.
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You can download the entire list in a single PDF.
Clicking on the link below will open a Google Docs page displaying the entire
list in PDF. To save a copy of the PDF, just click on the little down arrow in
the upper left. You can also print the list from the Google Docs page, but be
warned that it now weighs in at 435 pages!
[Current total: 1,966 writers]
UPDATED 2/2/2018
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(uncertain but probable
identification)
1900s – 1920s
Author of six children's
books, including the girls' school story The
Finding of Angela (1914) and another, Jackie's
School Adventures (1925), which certainly sounds like a school story. The
others are The Mystery Baby, or, Patsy
at Fellside (1906), Mr Marmalade's
Secret (1908), Mollie Rufus
(1910), and Curly Head in Search of a
Mother (1914).
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PAGE, BRENDA
(1 Sept 1898 – 18 Nov 1991)
(pseudonym of Marjorie Ellen
Day)
1920s – 1930s
Underrated (according to
Sims & Clare) author of six school stories with relatively realistic
plots and twist endings, including Schoolgirl
Rivals (1927), Monica and the Fifth
(1928), The Happy Few (1929), The Head Girl's Deputy (1930), Joan and the Scholarship Girl (1931),
and Ruth at Rooksby (1932).
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PAGE, FLORENCE (dates unknown)
1920s
Untraced author of seven short romances, including The Man Who Dared (1921), A Madcap in Love (1924), Stella the Misfit (1924), Pearl-All-Alone (1926), Nancy Gray (1926), The Magic of Mabel (1927), and The Day of Release (1929).
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PAGE, GERTRUDE
[ELIZA] (1873 – 1 Apr 1922)
(married name Dobbin)
1900s – 1920s
Novelist who
often wrote about life in Rhodesia, where she lived from 1900 with her
husband. Titles include Love in the
Wilderness: The Story of Another African Farm (1907), The Silent Rancher (1909), The Rhodesian (1912), Where Strange Roads Go Down (1913), Follow After (1915), The Veldt Trail (1919), and Jill on a Ranch (1922).
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PAGE, J[ESS].
M[ARGARET]. (13 Dec 1924 - 1999)
(married name Campbell)
1950s
Author of two girls'
school stories set in Scotland, The
Three Elizabeths (1950) and The
Twins on Trial (1951), with an interest in themes of heredity versus
environment. Page was also involved in local politics in Dundee.
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PAGE, SHEILA
M[ARJORIE]. (17 Aug 1909 – 14 Jan 1992)
1950s
Author of two apparently
rather frenetic girls' school stories, Marité
on Mendip (1957) and Margot at
Melsbury (1958).
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PAKENHAM, PANSY [FELICIA] (18 May 1904 – 19 Feb 1999)
(married name Lamb)
1920s – 1930s
Sister of Mary CLIVE and of biographer Violet Powell
(and thus sister-in-law of novelist Anthony Powell), and wife of painter
Henry Lamb. Biographer of Charles I (1936), translator, and author of two
novels—The Old Expedient (1928),
described as an “original and intriguing fantasy” set in London and on an
Irish island, and August (1931),
called “a brief but searching Odyssey among the intelligentsia.”
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PANTER-DOWNES,
MOLLIE (MARY) [PATRICIA] (25 Aug 1906 – 22 Jan 1997)
(married name Robinson)
1920s – 1940s
Novelist, biographer, journalist, and novelist. She
was the author of New Yorker’s
"Letter from London" for many years, and her wartime pieces were
collected as London War Notes 1939-1945
(1971), now reprinted by Persephone. She wrote five novels, all of which she
later disowned except for the last, One
Fine Day (1947), which evokes Virginia WOOLF's Mrs. Dalloway in detailing a single ordinary day in the life of a
woman—with the difference that Panter-Downes' story is set in the immediate
aftermath of World War II. Her precocious debut, The Shoreless Sea (1923), published when she was only 17, was a
bestseller and, according to her ODNB
entry, was advertised on the sides of London buses. The other three were The Chase (1925), Storm Bird (1929), and My
Husband Simon (1931). In addition to her journalism, she published
numerous short stories for The New
Yorker, many of which were collected by Persephone into two volumes, Good Evening Mrs Craven (1999) and Minnie's Room (2002). She also
published two volumes of acclaimed non-fiction, Ooty Preserved: A Victorian Hill Station in India (1967),
described as "an evocation of Anglo-Indian life," and At the Pines: Swinburne and Theodore
Watts-Dunton (1971), about the poet and the friend with whom he lived for
thirty years. I wrote about Good
Evening Mrs Craven here.
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PANTON, J[ANE].
E[LLEN]. (18 Oct 1848 – 13 May 1923)
(aka Mrs. J. E. Panton,
née Frith)
1880s – 1910s
Daughter of
painter William Frith and sister of novelist Walter Frith. Journalist, advice
writer, memoirist, and author of ten novels. Her memoirs, beginning with Leaves from a Life (1908), give
insight into Victorian artistic circles. Novels include Jane Caldecott (1882), Less
Than Kin (1885), Having and Holding
(1890), The Cannibal Crusader
(1908), and The River of Years
(1916). She was also an early pioneer of how-to writing on house furnishing
and décor, including articles collected in From Kitchen to Garret (1887).
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PARDOE, M[ARGOT MARY]. (7 Aug 1902 – 5 Jan 1996)
(married name Swift)
1930s – 1960s
Author of more than 20 children's books. Best known
for her dozen or so "Bunkle" books, beginning with Four Plus Bunkle (1939) and extending
through Bunkle Brings It Off
(1961), some of which were reprinted in recent years by Fidra. Of that
series, the St. James Guide to
Children's Writers noted: "The earlier books … are rich in
atmospheric description, and one remembers them not so much for their plots
as for their settings: the dismal out-of-season seaside resort in war time
that is the background for Bunkle Began
It, the marshy coastal creeks of Bunkle
Butts In, the rain-sodden second-rate riverside hotel in Bunkle Breaks Away, perhaps the best
book in the series. Few authors of the time conveyed so subtly and yet so
vividly the gloom and austerity of wartime and post-war Britain." Other
titles include The Far Island
(1936), Argle's Mist (1956), and The Nameless Boat (1957).
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PARES,
WINIFRED [PERCY] (1st qtr 1874 - 23 Dec 1972)
(née Smith, aka Winifred
Percy Smith)
1890s, 1910s – 1930s
Author of more than a
dozen children's titles. Her first two titles—A Pair of Ducks (1898) and Peacocks,
or, What Little Hands Can Do (1899)—appeared under her maiden name. She
married in 1900, which may explain why she apparently didn't publish again
until 1919. Other titles include An
Everyday Angel (1919), Hen and
Chickens: A Story of Girl Life in the Great War (1920), Four Winds (1923), The Grey House Opposite (1924), The Secret of the Dusty House (1925), The Creaking Bough (1926), Miss Lavender (1926), Through the Nursery Gate (1927), The Ivory Picture (1928), Poor Man's Pepper (1930), A Baker's Dozen (1938), The Toymakers of Trev (1939), and Mr Nobody's House (1939).
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PARGETER, EDITH
[MARY] (28 Sept 1913 – 14 Oct 1995)
(aka Ellis Peters, aka
Peter Benedict, aka Jolyon Carr, aka John Redfern)
1930s – 1990s
Novelist and mystery
writer. She began as a mainstream novelist, with such works as The City Lies Four-Square (1938), Ordinary People (1941, aka People of My Own), She Goes to War (1942), making use of
her own experiences in the WRNS during WWII, By Firelight (1948), a sort of ghost story about a widow having
visions of witchhunts, Lost Children
(1951), a love story set in the immediate postwar years, and Means of Grace (1956), about a young
refugee returning to postwar Germany to attempt to rebuild her life. She
published two acclaimed trilogies: The Heaven
Tree trilogy—comprised of The Heaven
Tree (1960), The Green Branch
(1962), and The Scarlet Seed
(1963)—is set in the 13th century, while The
Eighth Champion of Christendom—comprised of The Lame Crusade (1945), Reluctant
Odyssey (1946), and Warfare
Accomplished (1947)—follows a young man from an English village who
experiences warfare and returns home a changed man. Pargeter didn't create
her alter-ego crime novelist persona, Ellis Peters, until 1959. She is best
known for the tremendously successful Brother Cadfael mysteries, beginning with
A Morbid Taste for Bones (1977),
featuring a medieval monk as detective, which were memorably adapted for
television. Her other major series, beginning with Fallen Into the Pit (1951), features Inspector George Felse and,
later, his son Dominic. Less well known are a handful of early mysteries
written as Jolyon Carr—including Murder
in the Dispensary (1938), Freedom
for Two (1939), Masters of the
Parachute Mail (1940), and Death
Comes by Post (1940)—her one novel as John Redfern, The Victim Needs a Nurse (1940), and her one novel as Peter
Benedict, Day Star (1937).
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PARKER, JOY [MARY] (22 Feb 1922 – 7 Nov 2012)
(married name Scofield)
1940s, 1950s,
1980s
Wife of actor Paul Scofield. Actress, producer, and
author of three children's books—The
Story of Benjamin Scarecrow (1946), which she also illustrated, Adrian's Panda (1959), and Henry: The Story of a Mole (1988).
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PARKER, MARY
LOUISE (dates unknown)
1920s – 1940s
Untraced author of more
than 20 girls' school stories with action-packed plots. Titles include Pat of the Fifth (1927), Mollie of St Mildred's (1928), 'Miss Spitfire' at School (1931), One Thrilling Term (1934), A Jolly Trio (1935), The Triumphant Term (1939), and Suzette Wins Her Way (1947).
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Parkin, Dorothy
see CLEWES, DOROTHY M[ARY].
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PARR, OLIVE
KATHARINE (5 Jul 1874 – 3 Jul 1955)
(aka Beatrice Chase)
1900s – 1920s
Poet, novelist, campaigner
for Dartmoor preservation, inspiration for John Oxenham's novel The Lady of the Moor, and eccentric Dartmoor character (see
here). Parr's fiction,
Christian and romantic in theme, includes The
Voice of the River (1903), A
White-Handed Saint (1913), The
Dartmoor Window Again (1918), A
Dartmoor Galahad (1923), Lady
Agatha (1926), and Patricia
Lancaster's Revenge (1928). She published a memoir of Oxenham, My Chief Knight, John Oxenham: A Memoir
and an Appeal (1943).
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Parsons, Hubert
see TREE, VIOLA
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Patrick, Diana
see WILSON,
DESEMEA
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PATRICK, K.
(dates unknown)
1920s
Untraced author of a
single girls' school story, The Fourth
Form Feud (1928).
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Patrick, Susan
see ROBINS, PATRICIA [DENISE]
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PAUL, PHYLLIS (1903 - 1973)
1930s – 1960s
Author of eleven well-received novels, some dealing
with supernatural themes. Titles are We
Are Spoiled (1933), The Children
Triumphant (1934), Camilla
(1949), Constancy (1951), The Lion of Cooling Bay (1953), Rox Hall Illuminated (1956), A Cage for the Nightingale (1957), Twice Lost (1960), A Little Treachery (1962), Pulled Down (1964), and An Invisible Darkness (1967). A Cage for the Nightingale was
reprinted in recent years by Sundial Press, and has been compared to The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
I wrote about Twice Lost here.
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PAWLE, KATHLEEN
[HONORIA] (2 Mar 1905 - 1986)
1930s
Author of two novels—We in Captivity (1936), which follows
six characters during the 1916 Easter rising in Dublin, and Mural for a Later Day (1938), which
deals with young people in a Swedish colony in Delaware. Pawle was born in
London but emigrated to the U.S. in the early 1930s.
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Paye, Robert
see BOWEN, MARJORIE
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PAYN, MEG (MARGARET) [ISOBEL] ARMSTRONG (4 May 1904
– 14 Apr 1991)
(born Margaret Isobel Payn, possibly aka Sophia de
Crespigny, aka Christopher Sheridan)
1940s
Author of three novels—The Alchemist (1936) under her real name, and Bread and Circuses (1947) and Chandelier (1948) under her Sheridan
pseudonym. The last deals with attempts to civilize the orphaned daughter of
two circus performers. John Herrington found that her probate record reads
"PAYN, Margaret Isobel Armstrong, otherwise Margaret Isobel Armstrong De
Crespigny otherwise Sophia De Crespigny," but we've no idea when or how
the De Crespigny name came into play.
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PEARCE, CAROL
ANN (23 Dec 1929 – 15 Jul 2006)
(married name Evans)
1950s – 1960s
Author of three interwoven
girls' school stories focused on four friends and "amusing and largely
realistic," according to Sims and Clare. Titles are Summer Term (1952), We're
in the Sixth! (1960), and St
Kelvern's Launches Out (1962).
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PEARCE,
[ANN] PHILIPPA (23 Feb 1920 – 21 Dec 2006)
(married name Christie,
aka Warrener)
1950s – 1990s
Author of more than 20 children's
titles, including a few as Warrener for small children. Best known for Tom's Midnight Garden (1958), in which
a child in quarantine for measles discovers a door to the Victorian world. Other
titles include Minnow on the Say
(1955), Mrs. Cockle's Cat (1961), A Dog So Small (1962), The Children of the House (1968), The Battle of Bubble and Squeak
(1978), and The Way to Sattin Shore
(1983)
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PEARCE,
W[INIFRED]. M[ARY]. (23 Aug 1892 – 15 Dec 1986)
(née Savage)
1930s
Author of religious-themed
fiction and biography, as well as one girls' school story, Mystery at St Olave's (1935). Her
other children's titles include David's
Victory (1934), Accidents Will
Happen (1937), and Lionel Wins
Through (1938).
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PEARSON,
MOLLIE MARY SUSAN SEYMOUR (c1900 – 1962)
(née Davies, earlier
married name Lee, aka Molly Seymour, aka Barbara Hedworth, aka Guy Trent, aka
Julia Hall, aka Mary Thorne)
1920s – 1960s
Author of nearly 200 romantic novels, most under her
Barbara Hedworth, Guy Trent, and Molly Seymour pseudonyms. Titles include Through the Front Door (1929), Foolish Pelican (1932), Jewelled Heels (1937), Be Brave for Love (1940), The Other Woman's Crime (1942), The Song Goes On (1947), Gay Was Their Hope (1948), Shadow of Adrian (1951), A Man Also Dreams (1954), Julie and the Prince (1957), Spring Rapture (1959), The Girl from Soho (1960), and A Symphony of Love (1962).
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PECK, WINIFRED
[FRANCES] (1882 – 20 Nov 1962)
(née Knox, aka Winifred
Knox)
1910s – 1950s
Sister of mystery writer Ronald Knox and
cryptographer Dilly Knox. Author of more than 20 volumes of fiction. A Patchwork Tale (1925) and The King of Melido (1927) are
children's titles. She also wrote two mysteries—The Warrielaw Jewel (1933), set in Edwardian Scotland among an
eccentric and increasingly impoverished upper-crust family, and Arrest the Bishop? (1949), involving a
murder among a group of clergy gathered for an ordination. Both of those have
been reprinted by Dean Street Press. Bewildering Cares: A Week in the Life of a
Clergyman's Wife (1940) is
a humorous Provincial Lady-ish novel of the early days of World War II in the
life of a vicar's wife, which has been released as a Furrowed Middlebrow book
by Dean Street Press. House-Bound (1942), meanwhile, is about a woman
surviving without servants in wartime Edinburgh. Her other novels are Twelve Birthdays (1918), The Closing Gates (1922), A Change of Master (1928), The Skirts of Time (1935), The Skies Are Falling (1936), Coming Out (1938), Let Me Go Back (1939), A Garden Enclosed (1941), Tranquility (1944), There Is a Fortress (1945), Through Eastern Windows (1947), Veiled Destinies (1948), A Clear Dawn (1949), Facing South (1950), Unseen Array (1951), and Winding Ways (1951). Late in life, she
published two memoirs, A Little
Learning: A Victorian Childhood (1952) and Home for the Holidays (1955). I've written about several of
Peck's books here.
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PEDLER, MARGARET
(1877 - 1948)
(née Bass)
1910s – 1940s
Author of more than 30 romantic novels, many
apparently featuring primitive he-men and the fragile women who love them.
Titles include This Splendid Folly
(1918), The Barbarian Lover
(1923), Yesterday's Harvest (1926),
Pitiless Choice (1933), Flame in the Wind (1937), and Not Heaven Itself (1941).
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PEEL, H[AZEL].
M[ARY]. (26 May 1930 - )
(aka Wallis Peel)
1950s – 1960s
Author of several
horse stories for children, beginning with Fury, Son of the Wilds (1959), some of which have been reprinted
by Fidra. Others include Pilot the
Hunter (1962), Easter the Show
Jumper (1965), and Jago (1966).
In recent years, Peel has written fantasy novels under her pseudonym.
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Peel, Wallis
see PEEL, H[AZEL]. M[ARY].
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PELHAM, COLLEEN
(c1879 - 1966)
1920s – 1930s
Author of four novels, possibly romances, including Love's Harvest Time (1928), By Rugged Paths (1929), The Golden Key (1930), and The Greater Treasure (1931).
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Pendarves, G. G.
see TRENERY,
GLADYS GORDON
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PENDERED, MARY
LUCY (1858 – 19 Dec 1940)
1890s – 1930s
Biographer and author of more than 20 novels, many
of them dealing with rural or village life. Her best known title today is
probably her ghost tale, The Uncanny
House (1927). At Lavender Cottage
(1912), according to OCEF, is about
"the late-flowering passion of a rural spinster who has already been
softened up by the arrival of a young nephew." Other titles include A
Pastoral Played Out (1895), An
Englishman (1899), Daisy the Minx
(1911), Phyllida Flouts Me (1913), The Silent Battlefield (1918), Land of Moonshine (1922), Mortmain (1928), The Forsaken House at Misty Vale (1932), and Herriot of Wellinborrow (1936).
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Penmare, William
see NISOT, ELIZABETH
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PENNY, F[ANNY].
E[MILY]. (1847 – 22 Dec 1939)
(née Farr, aka F.E.F.P.)
1880s – 1930s
Author of more then 40 novels, often set in India where she lived for many
years. Some explored conflicts of culture and religion, while others appear
to be more light-hearted in tone. Titles include Caste and Creed (1890), The
Tea-Planter (1906), The Malabar
Magician (1912), The Outcaste
(1912), A Love Offensive (1918), Desire and Delight (1919), The Rajah's Daughter (1921), Living Dangerously (1925), Get on with the Wooing (1931), and The Elusive Bachelor (1935).
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PENROSE, MRS.
H. H. (1860 – 23 Aug 1942)
(pseudonym of Mary
Elizabeth Penrose, née Lewis)
1890s – 1910s
Author of more than a dozen novels, mostly light and
humorous in tone. Titles include The
Love that Never Dies (1898), As
Dust in the Balance (1905), The
Grey Above the Green (1908), Charles
the Great: A Very Light Comedy (1912), The Brat: A Trifle (1913), The
House of Rennel (1913), and Two
Young Pigeons (1915). She stopped publishing following her son's death in
World War I.
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PERRIN, ALICE
(1867 – 13 Feb 1934)
(née Robinson)
1890s – 1930s
Author of 20 volumes of
fiction, largely focused on Anglo-Indian life. Novels include Into Temptation (1894), The Stronger Claim (1903), The Charm (1910), The Woman in the Bazaar (1914), The Vow of Silence (1920), Government
House (1925), and Other Sheep
(1932). Her story collection, East of
Suez (1901), was compared to Kipling, while Red Records (1906) contains stories of the supernatural.
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Peters, Ellis
see PARGETER, EDITH
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PETERSON, MARGARET
[ANN] (6 Nov 1883 – 28 Dec 1933)
(aka Glint Green, married
name Fisher)
1910s – 1930s
Author of more than 40 volumes of exotic melodrama,
often set in India where she grew up, as well as a series of crime novels
featuring series detective Inspector Weild. Titles include Blind Eyes (1914), Butterfly Wings (1916), Fate and the Watcher (1917), The Death Drum (1919), Moon Mountains (1920), Pamela and Her Lion Man (1926), and Guilty, My Lord (1928).
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PETRE, DIANA (7 Apr 1912 – 1 Apr 2001)
(née Perry, earlier married name Wilkinson)
1950s
Half-sister of novelist J. R. Ackerley and sister of
Sally Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster. Author of two novels, Portrait of Mellie (1952) and The Cruel Month (1955), but her most
famous book is her biography of her mother, Muriel Perry (mistress of
Ackerley's father), The Secret Orchard
of Roger Ackerley (1975), which has something in common with Ackerley's
book about his father. Both are children searching for the truth about
mysterious parents. One source says she was aka Diana Bryn, but its unclear when
or where she used that name.
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PETROVA, OLGA (10 May 1884 – 30 Nov 1977)
(pseudonym & stage name of Muriel Harding, married
names Willoughby and Dillon)
1920s
Born and raised in England, she moved to the U.S. to
become and vaudeville star and stage and film actress, appearing in more than
two dozen films in just seven years. Sadly, most of her films are now lost.
She was also the screenwriter for several films. She wrote three plays in the
1920s, as well as a single volume of fiction, The Black Virgin and Other Stories (1926). Her memoir, Butter with My Bread, appeared in
1942.
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PETTMAN, GRACE
(1870 - 1951)
(married name Pout, aka
Spencer Deane, aka Helen Kent, aka Nigel Strong)
1880s – 1950s
Author of more than 60
volumes of fiction, including girls' school stories under her real name and
as Helen Kent, boys' school stories as Spencer Deane, and at least one other
children's book as Nigel Strong. It's unclear whether any of her fiction was
for adults. Titles include Helen: The
Story of a Broken Idol (1889), A
Bitter Bargain (1906), A Study in
Gold (1912), Ordered to the Front
(1915), Given in Exchange (1926), A Step in the Dark (1929), Sister Sophie's Story (1929), The Jolliest School of All (1929), Only Helen (1931), Stella Seaton, Schoolgirl (1933), The Making of Marcus (1936), The Doctor's Story (1937) The Mystery Prize (1939), Cobwebs or Chains? (1945), and The Dullest Boy at Treherne (1950).
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PEYTON, K.
M. (2 Aug 1929 - )
(pseudonym of Kathleen
Wendy Peyton, née Herald, aka Kathleen Herald)
1940s – 2000s
Author of more than 50
volumes of children’s fiction. Her first book, Sabre, the Horse from the Sea (1947), appeared when she was 18.
She remains best known for the Flambards series, beginning with Flambards (1967), set in a crumbling
manor house in the early 20th century. Other titles, among them several pony
stories, include Crab the Roan
(1953), North to Adventure (1959), The Maplin Bird (1964), Fly-by-Night (1968), A Pattern of Roses (1972), Pennington's Heir (1973), Who, Sir? Me, Sir? (1983), Downhill All the Way (1988), The Pony That Went to Sea (1997), and Pony in the Dark (2001).
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PHARALL, AISHIE (c1898 - ????)
1920s – 1930s
Actress and author of four novels of the 1920s and 1930s, including at
least two Jazz Age novels which appear to make romantic use of post-war
settings—Middle Mists (1923) and The Little Less (1924)—plus two more, Jocelyn Calls the Tune (1932) and Infidelity (1934). Noel Coward
described her in his memoir as a "big girl with a fox-terrier."
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PHILLIMORE,
[MARGARET] CECILY (22 Nov 1874 – 6 Aug 1965)
(née Spencer-Smith)
1910s – 1920s
Author of three
Christian-themed novels, including By
an Unknown Disciple (1919), apparently a first-person account of Gospel
events, Paul the Jew (1927), and Paul the Christian (1930). She appears
to have emigrated to South Africa in the 1930s.
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PHILLPOTTS,
[MARY] ADELAIDE EDEN (23 Apr 1896 – 4 Jun 1993)
(married name Ross, aka
Mary Adelaide Eden Ross)
1920s - 1990
Daughter of novelist Eden Phillpotts. Her career spanned an
incredible 75 years, including plays, poetry, and novels. According to her ODNB entry, "Her works presented
realistic portrayals of women experiencing the pressures and stresses of
Victorian society." Titles include The
Friend (1923), Lodgers in London
(1925), A Marriage (1928), The Founder of Shandon (1932), Broken Allegiance (1937), The Gallant Heart (1939), The Round of Life (1940), From Jane to John (1943), Stubborn Earth (1951), Village Love (1988), and The Beacon of Memory (1990). In her
fifties, she married an American bookseller, which caused her famous father
to cut her off. In her memoir, Reverie
(1981), she made shocking allegations about her father, including allegations
of incest and cruelty.
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PICARD,
BARBARA LEONIE (4 Dec 1917 – 15 Dec 2011)
1940s – 1960s, 1990s
Author of nearly a dozen
original children's titles, more or less evenly divided between fairy tale
themes and historical fiction, as well as more than a dozen volumes of her
retellings of classics, myths, and legends. Among her fairy tale-themed
fiction are The Mermaid and the
Simpleton (1949), The Faun and the
Woodcutter's Daughter (1951), The
Lady of the Linden Tree (1954), and The
Goldfinch Garden: Seven Tales (1963). Some of her stories were collected
in Selected Fairy Tales (1996). Her
historical novels for children include Ransom
for a Knight (1956), Lost John: A
Young Outlaw in the Forest of Arden (1962), One Is One (1965), The
Young Pretenders (1965), and The
Deceivers (1996). On a side note, according to her Contemporary Authors entry, during World War II she worked for a
library and faced the unenviable task of deciding which books should be kept
in circulation and which should be provided as scrap for the war effort.
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PILCHER, ROSAMUNDE (22 Sept 1924 - )
(aka Jane Fraser)
1940s - 2000
Author of more than 30 works of fiction. Best known
for her 1988 bestseller The Shell
Seekers. Ten of her earliest novels appeared under her pseudonym,
including Half-Way to the Moon
(1949), Dangerous Intruder (1951), Dear Tom (1954), and The Keeper's House (1963). Later works
under her own name include Sleeping
Tiger (1967), Snow in April
(1972), The Carousel (1982), September (1990), Coming Home (1995), and Winter
Solstice (2000). Several of her works have been dramatized for
television.
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Pilgrim, Anne
see ALLAN, MABEL ESTHER
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PIM, SHEILA
(21 Sept 1909 – 16 Dec 1995)
1940s – 1960s
Also a popular writer on
gardening, Pim is best known for her four mystery novels—Common or Garden Crime (1945), which vividly portrays wartime
life in an Irish village, Creeping
Venom (1950), which begins in the final days of the war and continues
into the first days of peace, A Brush With
Death (1950), and A Hive of
Suspects (1952). She also published three non-mystery novels. The Flowering Shamrock (1949) has to
do with English and Irish relations, and Rue Morgue Press called The Sheltered Garden (1965) "a
witty novel of manners with a few mystery elements but a great deal of
gardening". I've never been able to find any details about Other People's Business (1957). I
wrote about Common or Garden Crime here.
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Pinto, Jacqueline
see BLAIRMAN, JACQUELINE
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Plaidy, Jean
see
HIBBERT, ELEANOR
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PLAYFAIR, JOCELYN
(1904 - 1996)
(née Malan)
1930s – 1950s
Author of ten works of
fiction, including at least two mysteries or thrillers—Murder Without Mystery (1939) and Eastern Weekend (1940), the latter set in Malaya. A House in the Country (1944), set
during World War II, was reprinted by Persephone. Information about her other
titles is lacking, but titles are Storm
in a Village (1940), The Mill
(1942), Men Without Armour (1946), The Desirable Residence (1947), The Fire and the Rose (1948), A Man Called Miranda (1949), and The Nettlebed (1952). According to
Persephone's bio, "in the early 1950s she stopped writing. Her life in
Kensington was now busy with wood-carving, making jewellery, designing her
own clothes, gardening, conversation, French literature and jazz."
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PLEYDELL, SUSAN
(1907 - 1986)
(pseudonym of Isabel Janet
Couper Senior, née Syme)
1950s – 1970s
Author of ten novels,
including Summer Term (1959) and A Young Man’s Fancy (1962), both set
at a boys’ school. The others are The
Glenvarroch Gathering (1960), A
Festival for Gilbert (1960), Good
Red Herring (1962), Griselda (1964),
The Road to the Harbor (1966), Jethro's Mill (1974), Pung of Dragons (1975), and Brighouse Hotel (1977). Several of her
titles have been reprinted by Greyladies.
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PLUNKET, IERNE
[ARTHUR] L[IFFORD]. (9 May 1885 – 11 Apr 1970)
1920s – 1940s
Historian, playwright, and
author of girls' school and other children's fiction, including Sally Cocksure (1925), Joanna of Little Meadow (1926), The Dare Club (1931), The Dadlingford Mystery (1936), The Secret of High Marley Wood (1936),
and The Mystery of the Tor (1943).
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POCOCK, DORIS [ALICE] (3 Nov 1890 – 26 Nov 1974)
1910s – 1950s
Poet and children's author whose work includes girls'
school stories such as The Head Girl's
Secret (1927), mystery stories like The
Riddle of the Rectory (1931), and World War II stories like Catriona Carries On (1940) and Lorna on the Land (1946), the latter
about Land Girls. Other titles include Judy
Sees It Through (1919), The Secret
of Hallowdene Farm (1923), A
Runaway Rebel (1929), Tried and
True (1935), The Treasure of the
Trevellyans (1938), The Two P's
(1950), and The Finding of a Way
(1954). I briefly mentioned The
Treasure of the Trevellyans here.
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POLLOCK, IDA [JULIE] (12 Apr 1908 – 3 Dec 2013)
(née Crowe, aka Susan Barrie, aka Jane Beaufort, aka
Marguerite Bell, aka Rose Burghley, aka Anita Charles, aka Averil Ives, aka
Pamela Kent, aka Barbara Rowan, aka Mary Whistler)
1930s – 2000s
Famously the "other woman" in Enid
Blyton's divorce proceedings, Pollock was the long-lived and prolific author
of more than 120 romances, many for Mills & Boon, spanning 70 years
(1935-2005) and under many pseudonyms. Titles include Indian Love (1935), Hotel
Stardust (1955), The Black
Benedicts (1956), Love Is For Ever
(1957), Nightingale in the Sycamore (1957), The Moon and Bride's Hill (1958), Highland Mist (1962), and White
Rose of Love (1963). Her daughter is romance writer Rosemary Pollock.
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Pollock, Mary
see BLYTON,
ENID
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PONSONBY, DORIS ALMON (23 Mar 1907 – 2 Dec 1993)
(aka Doris Rybot, aka Sarah Tempest)
1940s – 1980s
Author of more than 30 historical novels, often set
in the Regency period and most with a romantic component. Of Bow Window in Green Street (1949), set
in 18th century Bath, Twentieth-Century
Romance and Historical Writers says "all the hopes and excitement of
Regency living are wonderfully captured. One feels one could again knock on
the door of the very house in which they all lived." Others include The Gazebo (1945), Merry Meeting (1948), Dogs in Clover (1954), So Bold a Choice (1960), A Prisoner in Regent's Park (1961), A Winter of Fear (1967), Flight from Hanover Square (1972), and
A Woman Despised (1988).
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POPE, JESSIE
(18 Mar 1868 – 14 Dec 1941)
(married name Lenton)
1910s
Poet, humorist, editor of
Robert Noonan's The Ragged-Trousered
Philanthropists (her version has been called a bowdlerisation), and
author of two novels, The Tracy Tubbses
(1914), a humorous tale of married life, and Love on Leave (1919),
about a woman's love for an ANZAC soldier. She aroused controversy with the
overt propaganda of her WWI poems.
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POPE, LAURA [LILIAN ELIZABETH] (21 Jul 1911 - 2006)
(née Foskett)
1950s
Author of a single novel, Veronica (1951), set in French North Africa and dealing with a
beautiful young Englishwoman's effect on a French father and son.
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POST, VANE
(dates unknown)
(pseudonym of ?????)
1920s
Untraced author of a
single tale, Plantagenet Anne
(1929), which traces the experiences of a pugilistic girl descended from
royalty from boarding school to a German pensionnat and on to adulthood.
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Margaret Potter
see JOSEPHINE ELDER
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POWER, RHODA DOLORES LE POER (29 May 1890 – 9 Mar 1957)
1950s
Children's author and BBC broadcaster who innovated broadcasts
to interest children in history. Most of her books were historical
non-fiction and very short stories for young readers, but she published at
least one work of historical fiction, Redcap Runs Away (1952), about a
medieval boy who joins a troupe of minstrels.
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POWYS, [CATHERINE EDITH] PHILIPPA (8 May 1886 – 11
Jan 1963)
1930s
Sister of novelists John Cowper and Theodore Francis,
Powys wrote dark fiction about rural life but published only one novel in her
lifetime, The Blackthorn Winter
(1930). Two more unpublished novellas, The
Tragedy of Budvale and Sorrel Barn,
were released by Sundial Press in 2011. In the 1920s, she became friends with
poet Valentine Ackland and grew infatuated with her, just before Ackland
entered the relationship with Sylvia Townsend WARNER that would last for the
rest of her life.
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Preedy, George
see BOWEN, MARJORIE
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PRESCOTT, HILDA [FRANCES MARGARET] (22 Feb 1896 – 5
May 1972)
1920s – 1930s,
1950s
Biographer and historical novelist with a Christian
perspective. Her first three novels—The
Unhurrying Chase (1925), The Lost
Fight (1928), and Son of Dust
(1932)—are set in medieval France, but her most famous work is The Man on a Donkey (1952), set in
England in the 1500s. She also wrote a single thriller, Dead and Not Buried (1938), adapted for TV in the 1950s.
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PRESSLEY, HILDA (18 Nov 1912 - 1977)
(married name Nickson, aka Hilda Nickson, aka Hilary
Preston)
1950s – 1970s
Author of more than 40 romantic novels, many of them
hospital-themed. Titles include The
Tender Heart (1957), Love Is the
Actor (1957), Night Nurse Lucy
(1960), Love, the Surgeon (1961), Sister of Nightingale (1963), Gather Then the Rose (1968), and Surgeons in Love (1978).
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Preston, Hilary
see PRESSLEY, HILDA
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PRICE, ELEANOR CATHERINE (1847 – 31 May 1933)
1870s – 1930s
Author of more than two dozen novels, some or all of
them historical. Titles include One
Only (1874), The Story of a
Demoiselle (1980), Red Towers
(1888), In the Lion's Mouth (1894)
(about English children in the French Revolution), Young Denys (1896), The
Queen's Man (1905), Alix of the
Chateau (1924), and Merry Dance
(1931).
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PRICE, EVADNE
(c1896 – 17 Apr 1985)
(married names Fletcher
and Attiwill, aka Helen Zenna Smith)
1920s – 1960s
Children's author, playwright, astrologer, and
novelist. Best known today for her vivid World War I novel Not So Quiet …
Stepdaughters of War (1930, written under her
pseudonym), which was based in part on the diary of an ambulance driver named
Winifred Young. According to her ODNB entry, many readers believed the
novel was based on the author's own experiences, though in fact "Price's
own experience of the war seems to have been limited to a stint as a
temporary civil servant in the Air Ministry." Four more pseudonymous
novels—Women of the Aftermath (1931), Shadow Women (1932), Luxury
Ladies (1933), and They Lived with Me (1934)—continued the
character's story. Under her own name, Price was known for her series of ten
children's books about Jane Turpin, a less successful female version of
Richmal CROMPTON's William. In the 1930s, Price published several
melodramatic novels with titles rich in exclamation points, including Diary
of a Red-Haired Girl (1932), Probationer! (1934), Strip Girl!
(1934), Society Girl (1935), and Red for Danger! (1936). In the
1950s and early 1960s, she published several more muted romance novels,
including The Dishonoured Wife (1951), The Love Trap (1958),
and Air Hostess in Love (1962). In later years, she wrote horoscopes
for She and Australian Vogue.
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PRICE, HILDA
[GWENDOLINE PEARL] CUMINGS (23 Sept 1886 – 25 Apr 1966)
(née Cumings)
1950s – 1960s
Author of two children's
titles—Two's Company (1951) and The Queen's Tumbler (1961). She
married an American journalist in 1920 and eventually relocated to the U.S.,
though the exact date is uncertain.
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PRICE, MARJORIE MURIEL (15 Mar 1904 – 3 Apr 1946)
(married name Brightman, aka Victoria Rhys)
1930s – 1940s
Author of more than 30 romantic novels, most for
Mills & Boon, including The Mantle
of Saltash (1930), Pandora Dances
(1932), The Woman Sunday (1934), Gay Roads (1936), Impossible Gardenia (1937), Trial
by Gunfire (1941), The Angels Fell
(1945), Dawn Pales the Stars
(1945), and Look Back, Stranger
(1948).
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PRICE,
[LILIAN] NANCY [BACHE] (3 Feb 1880 – 31 Mar 1970)
(married name Maude)
1940s
Actress,
founder of the People's Theatre, travel and nature writer, playwright, poet,
memoirist, and novelist. Price published numerous books about the English
countryside, as well as a story collection, Jack by the Hedge (1942) and one novel, Ta-mera (1950).
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PRIME, HEATHER [MURIEL] (19 Mar 1930 – 21 Dec 1972)
(married name Richardson)
1940s - 1950s
Author of at least seven children's titles, most or
all of which appear to be family adventure tales. Titles are The Adventurous Nine (1949), Nine on the Trail (1951), Ginger for Pluck (1952), Nine Afloat (1952), The Hollys of Tooting Steps (1953), The Hollys on Wheels (1954), and The Monkey on the Red Rose (1959).
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PRITCHARD,
ELIZABETH (19 Apr 1906 – 25 Nov 2002)
(née Fazackerley)
1950s – 1960s
Missionary who spent 40
years living in India. Author of three children's titles—The Mystery Girl at Maines (1956), The Jays to the Rescue (1957), and The School in the Himalayas (1961). She wrote a memoir called Testimony of a 'Whatnot', which
appears not to have been published until 2008.
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PROCTER, [MARJORIE] ELSPETH (23 Jun 1899 – 13 Jan
1997)
1920s - 1960s
Author of some 20 children's books, a number of them
Bible-related stories for younger children published by Blandford Press.
Among her titles that appear to be for older children are The Mystery Plane (1935), Shipwreck Bay (1938), The Pony Trackers (1952), and The Treasure Riders (1955).
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Prole, Lozania
see BLOOM, URSULA
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Prothero, John
Keith
see JONES, ADA ELIZABETH
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PROTHERO-LEWIS,
HELEN (1862 – 7 Aug 1946)
(married name Pugh)
1890s – 1920s
Author of more
than 20 romantic novels, including Her
Heart's Desire (1890), Hooks of
Steel (1894), Thraldom (1903), Tobias and the Angel (1908), Love and the Whirlpool (1916), As God Made Her (1919), The Silent Shore (1921), The Fire Opal (1922), Ironwy and Her Lovers (1924), and These Our Misdoings (1928).
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PRYCE, DAISY
HUGH (1862 – 21 Dec 1921)
(pseudonym of Margaret
Jennette Pryce)
1890s – 1910s
Welsh author of ten
novels. OCEF called Deyncourt of
Deyncourt (1907) "a predictable tale of inheritance and babies
swapped at birth," and Hill Magic
(1914) is about a man in a Welsh village who adopts an orphan. The other
titles are Goddesses Three (1896), Valda Hanem: The Romance of a Turkish
Harim (1899), The Pasha (1901),
Love's Mirage: Being a Story of the
Power of the Past (1902), A Diamond
in the Dust (1909), The Marriage of
Count Malorto (1911), The Precipice
(1911), and The Ethics of Evan Wynne
(1913). Reportedly she had spent two years working as a governess in a
Turkish harem.
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PRYCE, LUCY MYFANWY (3 Oct 1890 – 16 Mar 1976)
1910s – 1940s
Welsh author of nine novels. Blind Lead (1928) is about a family staying in the Welsh
mountains while the children recover from measles. The others are Blue Moons (1919), Parsons' Wives (1926), Gingerbread Lea (1927), Wild Oats Meadow (1927), The Wood Ends (1938), Lady in the Dark: Country Dance for Four
Couples (1938), Anything Might
Happen (1939), and A Life of My Own
(1946). Her father had been vicar of Ysbyty Ifan in Conwy for several years
and then dean of St Asaph.
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PRYDE, HELEN
W[ATT]. (9 Jul 1902 – 23 Jan 1955)
(née Renfrew)
1940s – 1950s
Author of a series of novels based on a radio series
featuring the McFlannels, a working class Glasgow family, including The First Book of the McFlannels
(1947), The McFlannels See it Through
(1948), McFlannels United (1949), McFlannel Family Affairs (1950), and Maisie McFlannel's Romance (1951).
Peggy Ann wrote about the first volume here.
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PULLEIN-THOMPSON, CHRISTINE (1 Oct 1925 – 2 Dec 2005)
(married name Popescu, aka Christine Keir)
1940s – 1990s
Daughter of Joanna CANNAN
and sister of Diana PULLEIN-THOMPSON and Josephine PULLEIN-THOMPSON. Prolific author of children's horse stories and other
fiction. Titles include We Rode to the
Sea (1948), Goodbye To Hounds
(1952), Phantom Horse (1955), Stolen Ponies (1957), Ride By Night (1960), The Gipsy Children (1962), A Dog in a Pram (1965), Room to Let (1968), Black Velvet (1975), Phantom Horse in Danger (1980), The Big Storm (1988), and Havoc at Horsehaven (1999). She also
collaborated on early works with her sisters.
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PULLEIN-THOMPSON, DIANA (1 Oct 1925 – 21 Oct 2015)
(married name Farr, aka Diana Farr)
1940s – 1990s
Daughter of Joanna CANNAN
and sister of Christine PULLEIN-THOMPSON and Josephine PULLEIN-THOMPSON. Children's author who, like her sisters, focused primarily on
horse stories for children. Titles include I Wanted A Pony (1946), Three
Ponies and Shannan (1947), Janet
Must Ride (1953), The Boy Who Came
To Stay (1960), The Battle of
Clapham Common (1962), Ponies in the
Valley (1976), Only a Pony
(1980), and The Long Ride Home
(1996). She also published non-fiction under her married name.
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PULLEIN-THOMPSON, JOSEPHINE [MARY] (3 Apr 1924 – 19
Jun 2014)
(aka Josephine Mann)
1940s – 1990s
Daughter of Joanna CANNAN
and sister of Christine PULLEIN-THOMPSON and Diana PULLEIN-THOMPSON. Author,
like her sisters, of children's
horse stories. Her titles include Six
Ponies (1946), I Had Two Ponies
(1947), Prince Among Ponies (1952),
The Trick Jumpers (1958), Race Horse Holiday (1971), and Ride to the Rescue (1979). She also
published three mysteries—Gin and
Murder (1959), They Died in the
Spring (1960), and Murder Strikes
Pink (1963)—which were reprinted in recent years by Greyladies, as well
as, under her pseudonym, one gothic novel, A Place with Two Faces (1972). I wrote about her mysteries here.
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PULLING, NORAH [TEMPE] (5 Feb 1896 - 1975)
1930s – 1950s
Author of six children's titles. The House in the Floods (1938) and A Quiet Time for Molly (1941) are
definitely for older readers, while Mary
Belinda and the Ten Aunts (1945) looks like a charming title for younger
children. The others are The Young 'Un
(1944), A Little Magic for the Browns
(1949), and A Little Magic for Barbara
(1959). She worked as a hospital almoner.
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PULSFORD, MARGARET (dates unknown)
1940s
Untraced author of three novels—Hope My Heritage (1945), Happy
Highway (1947), and Late and Soon
(1948).
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PULVERTAFT, [ISOBEL] LALAGE (1925 - )
(married name Green, aka Hilary March)
1950s – 1960s
Author of four novels—the first three under her own
name, the last under her pseudonym. No
Great Magic (1956) may have archaeological themes and was dramatized by
the BBC under the title Dead Man's
Embers, but I've located no other details. The Thing Desired (1957) was described by Kirkus as "[a] bright novel of London artists and
intellectuals." Golden October
(1965), set at a private school, is about a headmaster's wife returning home
after a love affair. Her final novel, published as Hilary March, was Either/Or (1966, published in the U.S.
as A Question of Love), which may
have lesbian themes.
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PYE, VIRGINIA [FRANCES] (27 Oct 1901 – 12 Apr 1994)
(née Kennedy)
1930s – 1950s
Sister of novelist Margaret KENNEDY. Children's author who
specialized in holiday adventure stories. Titles are Red-Letter Holiday (1940), Snow
Bird (1941), Primrose Polly
(1942), Half-Term Holiday (1943), The Prices Return (1946), The Stolen Jewels (1948), Johanna and the Prices (1950), and Holiday Exchange (1953). She also
published one story collection for adults, St. Martin's Summer (1930).
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PYM, BARBARA
[MARY CRAMPTON] (2 Jun 1913 – 11 Jan 1980)
1930s – 1980s
Author of witty novels of
domestic life, often revolving around church and/or scholarly life. Her first
six novels—Some Tame Gazelle
(1950), Excellent Women (1952), Jane and Prudence (1953), Less Than Angels (1954), A Glass of Blessings (1958), and No Fond Return of Love (1961)—are
relatively light and humorous. Her next novel, however, An Unsuitable Attachment (completed 1963), was rejected by her
publisher, and when Pym was “rediscovered” a few years before her death—in
part thanks to the efforts of poet and friend Philip Larkin—her works had a
darker edge. These late works are Quartet
in Autumn (1977), often considered her best work, The Sweet Dove Died (1978), and A Few Green Leaves (1980). From that time, her works have
remained popular and in print. An
Unsuitable Attachment finally appeared in 1982, followed by two more
complete novels, Crampton Hodnet,
written around 1940, published 1985, and An
Academic Question, written 1970-1972, published 1986. Civil to Strangers (1987) includes
several other previously unpublished early writings, including two novel
fragments, Home Front Novel and a
"spy story," So Very Secret.
A Very Private Eye: An Autobiography in
Diaries and Letters, edited by Hazel Holt and Hilary Pym, appeared in
1984. I wrote a little about A Glass of
Blessings here.
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QUENTIN, DOROTHY
(26 Oct 1911 - 1983)
(pseudonym of Madeleine
Hermione Murat, married name Batten)
1930s – 1970s
Author of nearly 60 volumes of romance and romantic
suspense, including Rhapsody in Spring
(1940), Sob-Sister (1943), Reach Me a Star (1950), Love in Four Flats (1953), Reflections of a Star (1956), Whispering Island (1959), and The Dark Castle (1963).
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Quiet Woman
see MUNDY-CASTLE, FRANCES
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QUILLER-COUCH,
[FLORENCE] MABEL (1866 – 17 Nov 1924)
1890s - 1920
Sister of Arthur
Quiller-Couch, who published novels as "Q" and edited The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900.
Author of more than 20 volumes of fiction, including children's books and
novels, often set in Cornwall. Titles include Martha's Trial (1895), Paul
the Courageous (1901), The Carroll
Girls, or, How the Sisters Helped (1906), On Windycross Moor (1910), Anxious
Audrey (1915), and A Cottage Rose
(1920), as well as Cornwall's
Wonderland: Legends of Old Cornwall (1914).
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QUIN, SHIRLAND
(8 Aug 1898 – 26 Apr 1987)
(pseudonym of Enid Amvel
Guest, married names Northwood and Rogers)
1930s, 1950s
Actress, playwright, and author
of three novels. She was born in Massachusetts to English parents, grew up in
England, then returned to the U.S. as an adult, where she lived for a time in
Hawaii, the setting of her second novel, I
Sing of Honolulu (1935), a historical romance. Her debut, Dark Heritage (1931), is about a
Welshman finding success in the U.S. Her third and final novel was Delicate Gypsy (1954). Her play Dragon's Teeth (1933) was
controversial for its pacifism.
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QUIRK, VIOLET
(dates unknown)
1920s – 1930s
Untraced novelist whose debut,
Different Gods (1923), was
well-received, but who thereafter published only one additional novel, The Skirts of the Forest (1931).
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