Marjorie Bowen

Born Margaret Gabrielle Vere Long on November 1, 1885, on Hayling Island in Hampshire, she became one of the most productive popular writers of her time. Writing as Marjorie Bowen and under several other pen names, she published historical romances, supernatural tales, biographies, and works of popular history.

Her breakthrough came with The Viper of Milan in 1906, a novel she had written while still very young. From there she built an extraordinarily large body of work, often blending strong atmosphere with a gift for suspense, whether she was writing about past centuries or something more uncanny.

She died on December 23, 1952. Today she is remembered both for her sweeping historical fiction and for ghostly, gothic stories that helped keep her name alive with later readers of horror and classic popular fiction.