author
Réné Hansard
d. 1940
A South African-born writer who moved between Cape Town and Europe, she wrote travel sketches and fiction under the names Réné Juta and Réné Hansard. Her work is remembered especially for its vivid evocation of the Cape Peninsula and for novels published later in life.
1 Audiobook
The Cape Peninsula: Pen and Colour Sketches
by Réné Hansard
About the author
Born Henriette Irene Louise Juta, she is identified in reliable reference sources as a South African-born author who also wrote as Réné Juta and, later, Réné Hansard. Sources consulted during this search describe her as an author, amateur actress, and playwright, and place her life between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a death year of 1940.
Her best-known early book is The Cape Peninsula: Pen and Colour Sketches (1910), a descriptive work on the Cape region created with artist W. Westhofen. Other books linked to her in library and catalog records include Cannes and the Hills and the novel The Silver Fox (1938), showing a career that ranged from place writing to fiction.
Some sources also note that she later married the British diplomat Luke Hansard and lived in Europe, which helps explain the shift from the surname Juta to Hansard in her publications. Clear biographical details beyond that are limited in the sources reviewed, but her surviving books suggest a writer with a strong feel for landscape, atmosphere, and the social worlds around her.