Richard Dehan

Richard Dehan was the pen name of Clotilde Graves (1863–1932), born at Buttevant, County Cork, Ireland, who moved to England at nine and trained as a painter in London before turning to the stage. Her tragedy Nitocris opened at Drury Lane in 1887, and by 1896 she had two plays running simultaneously in the West End — the first woman to do so. She later turned to fiction, adopting the Dehan pseudonym because she doubted readers would accept a war novel from a woman; The Dop Doctor (1910), set during the siege of Mafeking, became a bestseller, and she followed it with That Which Hath Wings (1918) and other novels. She died in 1932 at a convent in Middlesex.