Helen Jerome (1) (1883–1966)

Helen Jerome, née Helene Ursula Bruton, was born in London, England to Irish parents who then emigrated to Australia.
As a teenager in the late 1890s, she became a regular contributor of poems and articles to the Sydney Catholic newspaper, Freeman’s Journal. In 1900, she married Armand Jerome, a publisher, and went with him to Paris on honeymoon. Helen submitted travel stories to Australian newspapers while she was traveling overseas. On returning to Australia, the couple had a child, and Helen wrote more travel pieces, poems and other news items for periodicals such as The Worker, The Age and others. In the following decades, she traveled extensively in Russia, the far East, the USA, and Europe.

By 1923, Helen Jerome had settled permanently in the USA and became a naturalized citizen in 1940. She started adapting novels for the stage in the 1930s, and became best known for her stage versions of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1932) and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1936). Both were successfully produced and staged in London and the USA. The former became the basis for a hit 1940 Hollywood film starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. Helen's adaptation of Pride and Prejudice gave greater substance to the character of Mr. Darcy, helping to make him into a well-known heartthrob. She re-married to George D. Ali, an oil company executive, and thereafter split her time between the USA and the UK.