Marjorie Bowen, pseudonym of Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell Biography

British writer of historical novels which were also published under the names George R. Preed, Margaret Campbell, and Joseph Shearing. She was born on Hayling Island, Hampshire, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Historical Society. Her first novel, The Viper of Milan (1906), about the Visconti family, was acknowledged as an influence by G. Greene (who referred to the book in Travels with My Aunt and who also spoke warmly of Bowen's work in his 1951 essay ‘The Lost Childhood’). This was followed by over seventy novels on historical themes, including The Carnival of Florence (1915), as well as biographical studies of Mary Wollstonecraft (1937), Maurice de Saxe (1938), and John Knox (1941).