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March 11, 1872

Kathleen Clarice Cornwell Klein Dealtry Groom (March 11, 1872 to 1954) was a British writer, whose many novels and short stories appeared under a variety of names. Here is a partial list of titles, which gives us a sense of the fiction:


Under the Mistletoe Bough (1908.)
Ill-Gotten Gain (1909.)
Love In The Darkness.(1918.)
Shadows Of Desires.(1919.)
Detective Sylvia Shale. (1924.)
The Folly of Fear. (1947.)
Phantom Fortune. (1948.)
The Recoil. (1952.)

Two of her three children, all from her first marriage, also became authors--Adrian Klein (1892-1969), and Denise  Klein (1897-1985). Prolific is a word which jumps to mind.

A drama of a more biographical nature involved an important member of the National Cat Club. That was Kathleen's aunt, Alice Cornwell Stennard Robinson. Robinson owned the Sunday Times, and was influential in the Ladies Kennel Club, founded in 1904. Somehow Kathleen and her husband promoted dog shows for this club, and in 1905 found they did not have the money to pay the the winners of a dog show. Whether this influenced her decision to write stories I am not sure, but she seems to have had the robustness Victorian women writers so often demonstrated. Whether she had any cats is something else I don't know.

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