Lily A. (Lily Augusta) Long

Lily Augusta Long was an American poet and novelist born in 1862 and died in 1927. She is remembered both for her poetry and for a run of mystery novels, giving her a place among writers who moved easily between literary and popular forms.

She also wrote detective fiction under the pseudonym Roman Doubleday. That double identity gives her career a special charm: readers can find one side of her in poems such as The Singing Place, and another in mysteries like The Hemlock Avenue Mystery.

Long is closely associated with Minnesota, and a 1924 portrait in Who's Who Among Minnesota Women helps place her within the region's literary life. Today, her work survives through public-domain archives and audiobook projects, where new readers can still discover both her poetry and her mysteries.