Lucas Cleeve

Born Adeline Georgiana Isabel Wolff, she wrote as Lucas Cleeve, Mary Walpole, and later as Mrs. Howard Kingscote. Sources agree that she was an English novelist and travel writer, and that she came from a notable family: her father was Henry Drummond Wolff, a diplomat and Conservative MP.

She was a remarkably productive writer, credited with more than sixty works. Although best remembered for fiction, she also ranged more widely, compiling Tales of the Sun, or, Folklore of Southern India and writing The English Baby in India and How to Rear it, which points to her interests in travel, language, and life beyond the drawing room novel.

Her most famous book was The Woman Who Wouldn't (1895), a novel written in direct response to Grant Allen’s The Woman Who Did. Later works appeared under her married name, Mrs. Howard Kingscote. She died in Château-d’Œx, Switzerland, in 1908.