Alma Strettell

Born in Genoa in 1853, Alma Strettell was a British writer, poet, and translator. She came from a cultured family: her father, Alfred Baker Strettell, served as a British consular chaplain in Italy, and her sister Alice later became the noted costume designer Alice Comyns Carr.

Strettell is best remembered for her translations from French and Flemish writers, especially the Belgian symbolists Maurice Maeterlinck and Émile Verhaeren. She also published poetry of her own and worked on books that introduced continental literature and folklore to English-speaking readers.

She was part of the wider late-Victorian art world and was painted more than once by John Singer Sargent, which hints at the creative company she kept. Alma Strettell died in 1939, leaving behind a body of work that quietly bridged British and European literary culture.