Joan Conquest

Writing as Joan Conquest, Mary Eliza Louise Cooke was a British author born in 1883 and died in 1941. Sources identify Joan Conquest as her pen name, and note that she was also known earlier in life as Sister Martin-Nicholson.

Before and alongside her fiction, she lived an unusually eventful life. Historical and reference sources describe her as a nurse during the First World War, and later as a prolific novelist whose books often drew on travel, adventure, and dramatic settings.

Her best-known titles include Desert Love, Leonie of the Jungle, The Hawk of Egypt, and Zarah the Cruel. She also wrote beyond straightforward romance, including some work noted by reference sources as science fiction, which helps explain why her career still attracts interest from readers and literary historians.