Anna Gordon Keown

Who was Anna Gordon Keown?

Anna Gordon Keown was an English author and poet.

She married writer and physician Dr Philip Gosse, son of the esteemed Edmund Gosse. When she died, her husband presented a large collection of literature to the University of Leeds in her memory, known as the Keown Collection.

Among her works, perhaps the most famous is her book The Cat who saw God, a comic drama about a cat who is possessed by the Roman Emperor Nero who decides to settle down with an old English spinster. In the week beginning November 14, 1932, TIME listed it as one of their "Books of the Week", noting it as "amusing in the English manner.".

Another of her best-known works is a sonnet she wrote in her youth during World War I. Entitled Reported Missing, it is studied to this day in British schools as part of the OCR GCSE English literature syllabus.