E. M. Delafield

Born Edmée Elizabeth Monica de la Pasture in 1890, she wrote under the name E. M. Delafield and became one of the most popular English authors of the interwar years. She published novels, short stories, essays, and plays, but is most widely remembered for Diary of a Provincial Lady, a lightly autobiographical comic classic inspired by life in rural Devon.

Her writing is often praised for its clear, amused view of family life, money worries, social expectations, and the quiet absurdities of everyday routine. Beyond her fiction, she also worked as a journalist and was involved with the magazine Time and Tide, showing how active she was in the literary and public life of her time.

Delafield died in 1943, but her books have continued to find new readers. What keeps her work alive is its combination of intelligence and ease: she could be very funny without ever losing sympathy for the people she wrote about.