Violet Fane (1843–1905)

Violet Fane was the pen name of Mary, Baroness Currie, née Mary Montgomerie Lamb. She was born at the family estate of Beauport Park near Hastings, England, to Charles James Savile Montgomerie Lamb and his wife Anna Charlotte Grey. In 1864, she married her first husband, Henry Sydenham Singleton, with whom she had four children. She published her first volume of poems, From Dawn to Noon, in 1872, under the pseudonym "Violet Fane," supposedly to avoid her family's disapproval. She later wrote that the name was taken from Benjamin Disraeli's 1826 novel Vivian Grey. Three years later, she published a verse novel, Denzil Place. After Singleton's death in 1893, she remarried to Sir Philip Currie, later created Baron Currie, a British diplomat. She accompanied him on his postings as Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1889 to 1893 and then Ambassador to Italy from 1898 to 1903. During her literary career, she published four more collections of poetry, three prose novels, a play, a volume of essays and stories, and a translation of the memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, as well as numerous articles in periodicals. In 1904, as Mary Currie, she published the essays Are Remarkable People Remarkable Looking and the autobiographical The Feast of Kebobs. Many of her writings were satirical and poked fun at the British upper classes. Her work was much admired in her day.