FM Mayor

Flora Mayor was a not very prolific writer who lived in the UK. She was born in Surrey in 1872 - her father was a professor of classics and an Anglican clergyman. She had a twin sister Alice who was very dear to her. She was intelligent and her father gave her a good education, sending her to college which was unusual at the time. However she did not do very well at college - spending a lot of her time enjoying herself. Her family were not too well off, and she tried to earn her own living. She was interested in the stage and tried to get into acting. However she did not have any success though she took classes and joined shaky touring companies. She found the actors were rough and not very refined, and began to give up hope of succeeding on the stage. She started to write stories and began to have some small success. She had an admirer, Ernest Shepherd, who wanted to marry her but it took him some time to get a job in India, which meant that he could support her. Alice was rather jealous of losing her sister. Then in 1903 Ernest died of typhoid while they were planning their wedding. Flora did not have any more chances of marriage. She lived with Alice for the rest of her life. Her health was not very good and while she wrote a couple of successful novels, she did not write a lot. She died in 1932 and Alice survived her for many years. Her best known novel is the Rector's Daughter which is about a very shy Victorian girl who lives with her elderly and difficult father in a village in the country. He is a scholar and a clergyman and he seems indifferent or hyper critical to all his children. I'll blog about her novels soon.