Alice Dudeney

Who was Alice Dudeney?

Alice Louisa Dudeney was a British author and short story writer. The wife of Henry Dudeney, a fellow author and inventor of mathematical puzzles and games, she used the pen-name Mrs. Henry Dudeney for much of her literary career. She herself became a popular writer in her lifetime, often compared to Thomas Hardy for her portrayals of Sussex regional life, and had over fifty volumes of fiction published between 1898 and 1937.

Called "one of the most powerful writers of fiction among modern English women" by Putnam's Magazine, she is noted for her novels A Man with a Maid, Folly Corner, Maternity of Harriott Wicken, and Spindle and Plough and was a regular contributor to Harper's Magazine. In 1928, Arthur St. John Adcock wrote "no woman novelist today writes more objectively or with a stronger imaginative realism in the creation of character and the designing of a story".

Dudeney was best known for her dramatic and romance fiction, though her books often touched upon social issues affecting the English working and lower middle classes. She was often touted by her publishers as "the novelist of the Weald and the Marsh and the Down Countries".