Duchess

Margaret Wolfe Hungerford was an Irish novelist born in 1855 who wrote popular light fiction in the late nineteenth century. Although many readers knew her as The Duchess, her books also appeared anonymously and under Mrs. Hungerford.

She became especially popular for lively romantic novels such as Molly Bawn, and her work was widely read across the English-speaking world. Her stories are remembered for their charm, social comedy, and easy readability, which helped make her one of the better-known popular novelists of her day.

Hungerford died in 1897, but her pen name has remained far more famous than her own. For listeners exploring Victorian fiction, she offers a warm, entertaining entry point into the era's bestselling popular novels.