E. S. (Ethel Smith) Dorrance

Born in Pennsylvania in 1880, Ethel Arnold Smith Dorrance wrote under the name E. S. Dorrance. She built a busy career as a novelist and short story writer in the early 1900s, and her work appeared across several genres, including Westerns, adventure stories, and mainstream popular fiction.

Some of her novels were written with her first husband, James French Dorrance, and together they published stories that appealed to a wide readership. She is now most often remembered for Damned: The Intimate Story of a Girl (1923), a novel noted for its unusual premise and its willingness to engage with questions of morality, judgment, and women’s lives.

Details about the later part of her life are less clear in the sources that are easy to confirm, but her books remain accessible through digital libraries and public-domain archives. That makes her an interesting rediscovery for listeners who enjoy forgotten popular writers from the early 20th century.