Adela E. (Adela Elizabeth Richards) Orpen

Adela E. Orpen was born Adela Elizabeth Richards on February 3, 1855, in Virginia, and after her mother's death she moved with her father to Kansas as a child. She later became closely connected with Ireland through marriage to historian Goddard Henry Orpen, and spent much of her adult life in County Wexford.

She wrote as Adela Orpen and also as Mrs. Goddard Orpen. Her books included Perfection City, an unusual novel with utopian and speculative elements, The Chronicles of the Sid, and Stories About Famous Precious Stones, showing a range that stretched from fiction to biographical and historical storytelling.

That mix of American beginnings and Irish literary life gives her work a distinctive flavor. She is remembered as an Irish writer whose background was anything but ordinary, and whose books still catch interest for their originality and period charm.