Lucas Malet

Lucas Malet (1852–1931), pen name of Mary St Leger Kingsley Harrison, was born in Eversley, Hampshire, the daughter of the novelist and clergyman Charles Kingsley. She trained as a painter at the Slade School before marrying her father's curate, William Harrison, in 1876, in a marriage that proved unhappy and childless. Writing under her pseudonym, she published her first novel, Mrs. Lorimer, in 1882, followed by The Wages of Sin (1891) and her most celebrated and controversial book, The History of Sir Richard Calmady (1901), whose disabled protagonist scandalized reviewers. She converted to Roman Catholicism in 1902 and died in penury at a friend's home in Wales.