author
Julia Frankau
1864–1916
Best known by the pen name Frank Danby, this sharp, controversial late-Victorian novelist wrote fiction that stirred strong reactions and made her impossible to ignore. She also moved beyond novels, producing serious work on art and print history.
1 Audiobook
Twilight
by Julia Frankau
About the author
Born in Dublin on July 30, 1859, Julia Frankau wrote fiction under the name Frank Danby. Her first novel, Dr. Phillips: A Maida Vale Idyll (1887), brought her sudden attention for its vivid portrait of London Jewish life and its provocative subject matter.
She went on to publish more novels as Frank Danby, building a reputation as a successful and outspoken writer. Under her own name, she also wrote works on art history and printing, including studies of eighteenth-century color plates and the engraver John Raphael Smith.
Frankau died on March 17, 1916. Today she is remembered as a distinctive literary voice whose work sparked debate in her own time and still interests readers of Victorian fiction and cultural history.