Eleanor Mercein Kelly

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on August 30, 1880, she became an American writer of fiction and nonfiction whose work was especially associated with romance and vivid international settings. She studied at Georgetown Visitation and later drew on wide travel experience in Europe, North Africa, and Asia for the places and moods that shaped her novels.

She wrote fourteen novels and one biographical study, The Chronicle of a Happy Woman: Emily A. Davison (1928), along with many short stories published in magazines including Ladies' Home Journal, Collier's, The Century Magazine, Harper's Monthly, and The Saturday Evening Post. Several of her stories reached the screen, including adaptations connected with Kildare of Storm and Their Mad Moment.

Remembered today for fiction that mixed romance with exotic scenery, she continued to be linked with both her married name and her maiden name, Mercein. She died in Louisville, Kentucky, on October 11, 1968.