Victoria Cross

Born Annie Sophie Cory in Rawalpindi, then part of British India, in 1868, she published under several names, most famously Victoria Cross. She went on to build a prolific career as a novelist and short-story writer, and her work was widely read in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Her fiction became known for its emotional intensity and for taking up themes of sexuality, class, race, and gender with unusual frankness. One of her best-known early novels, The Woman Who Didn't (1895), helped make her reputation, and later works such as Life's Shop Window kept her name before a broad popular audience.

Although she was once a notable literary presence, she has often been remembered more as a controversial or unconventional writer than as a household name. Today, she is frequently discussed as part of the New Woman tradition and for the way her popular fiction pushed against the social expectations of her era.