Olive Custance (1874–1944)

Olive Custace was born in London, the eldest daughter and heiress of a wealthy officer in the British army and his wife who were members of the landed gentry. She grew up in London and at the family's country seat, Weston Old Hall in Norfolk.

She began writing poetry at an early age and – highly unusual for a young woman of her class and era – was determined as a teenager to join the literary circles in London around Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, Ernest Dowson, John Gray, and other "Decadent" artists. Her early poems appeared in 1894 in the magazine The Yellow Book, and she soon rose to prominence. In 1897, she published her first book of poetry, entitled Opals.

She had a relationship in Paris in 1901 with the writer Natalie Clifford Barney, who admired her work, and they exchanged love poems. Around this time, Olive began to correspond with Lord Alfred Douglas. The two married in 1902, despite the disapproval of her parents. That same year, her second volume of poems, entitled Rainbows, was published, and she gave birth to a son. The Blue Bird appeared in 1905, and her fourth and final volume, The Inn of Dreams, was published in 1911.

Olive's marriage to Lord Alfred became troubled and they separated in 1913, although they reconciled for a short time in the 1920s. However, they did not divorce; in the 1930s, they lived near each other and saw each other almost daily. She continued to write and publish poems, mostly in local newspapers and journals. Her diaries were published in 2004 as I Desire the Moon: The Diary of Lady Alfred Douglas (Olive Custance), 1905–1910. Her work remains relatively unknown even among scholars of the 1890s.