Mary C. (Mary Catherine) Rowsell

Mary Catherine Rowsell was an English novelist, children's writer, and dramatist, born on December 29, 1839, and died on June 15, 1921. She is known for writing across several forms rather than staying in a single lane, moving between fiction for adults, historical writing, and books for younger readers.

Accounts of her life note that she was educated in Brussels and Bonn, and that this continental background shaped some of her subjects. Her books drew on German folk material and French historical figures, while many of her children's stories were set around well-known historical events.

Rowsell also wrote under the pseudonym Pen Derwas. A number of her works remain accessible through major public-domain archives, which has helped keep her name in circulation for readers interested in Victorian fiction and nineteenth-century children's literature.