Helen de Guerry Simpson (1897–1940)

Helen de Guerry Simpson was born in Sydney, Australia. Her father Edward Percy Simpson was a solicitor, and her mother Anne de Guerry was the daughter of the Marquis de Guerry de Lauret, who had emigrated from France. Her parents separated when she was young, and her mother moved to London. Helen was educated as a boarder at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Rose Bay and Abbotsleigh. She arrived in England in 1914, and the following year entered Oxford University to read French. In 1918, during World War I, she joined the Women's Royal Naval Service to work in decoding at the Admiralty. She returned to Oxford in 1919 to study music, intending to become a composer. While still an undergraduate, she published several short plays and founded the Oxford Women's Dramatic Society. Reputedly having broken strict regulations about acting at the university, she was sent down without completing her degree in 1921. She returned to Sydney for her brother's wedding and published Philosophies in Little, a collection of poetry with her own translations from French, Italian and Spanish. In 1922, she won a literary competition in the Daily Telegraph with her play A Man of His Time, based on the life of Benvenuto Cellini. The play was staged the next year. Back in Oxford again by February 1924, she made a bet that she could write a novel in five weeks: The result was a detective story called Acquittal (1925). It was quickly followed by other books, including The Baseless Fabric (1925); The Women's Comedy (1926), another play set in Renaissance Italy; and Cups, Wands and Swords (1927), which combined her interests in detective fiction and demonology. In 1927, she married (Sir) Denis John Browne, who became a famous pediatric surgeon, with whom she had a daughter named for her close friend Clemence Dane. The two writers collaborated in three detective novels between 1928 and 1932. In 1932 she published Boomerang, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Her other works included biographies, such as The Spanish Marriage (1933), Henry VIII (1934), and A Woman Among Wild Men (1938); books on domestic economy and cooking such as The Happy Housewife (1934) and The Cold Table (1935); and historical novels, including Saraband for Dead Lovers (1935), and Under Capricorn (1937), both of which were adapted into films. In the 1930s, she lectured and broadcast on the radio on literary, historical, and topical subjects. Her literary circle included Dorothy L. Sayers, Margaret Kennedy, and John Masefield. In 1939, Helen was endorsed as the Liberal candidate for the Isle of Wight but became ill from cancer and died in 1940, at age 42, before the election. Her last novel, Maid No More, was published the year of her death.