Denise Robins
Denise Robins (née Denise Naomi Klein; 1 February 1897 - 1 May 1985) was a prolific English romantic novelist and the first President of the Romantic Novelists' Association (1960-1966).
She wrote under her first married name and under the pen-names: Denise Chesterton, Eve Vaill, 'Anne Llewellyn', Hervey Hamilton, Francesca Wright, Ashley French, Harriet Gray and Julia Kane, producing short stories, plays, and about 170 Gothic romance novels.
In 1965, Robins published her autobiography, Stranger Than Fiction. At the time of her death in 1985, Robins's books had been translated into fifteen languages and had sold more than one hundred million copies. In 1984, they were borrowed more than one and a half million times from British libraries.
She was the daughter of the novelist K. C. Groom, and mother of romance novelist Patricia Robins. Some other members of her family are well-known artists.
Life's adventures make great reading!
Personal life
Robins was born Denise Naomi Klein on 1 February 1897 in London, England, the daughter of Kathleen Clarice Louise Cornwell, who was also a prolific author who wrote under several names, and of her first husband, Herman Klein, who was a professor of music and journalist. Of Russian Jewish ancestry, he had been born in Norwich in 1856. Her mother Kathleen Clarice had been born in Melbourne, Australia, on 11 March 1872 and was the daughter of George Cornwell and his wife Jemima Ridpath, married in 1850.[3] George Cornwell was a railway guard who became a successful gold prospector in Australia, operating several mines, and a notable building contractor. His eldest daughter, Alice Cornwell, born 1852, was spectacularly rich by the 1890s, returning to England and buying the Sunday Times newspaper
Her parents had married in 1890. He had a daughter Sibyl Klein, from a previous marriage, and they had two sons: Adrian Bernard Klein (1892-1969) and Daryl Klein (1894), before the birth of Denise Naomi Klein (1897-1985). The childhood of Denise, Adrian and Daryl Klein was far from settled. Kathleen Klein began an affair with a Worcestershire Regiment officer called Herbert Berkeley Dealtry, who was much younger than her husband, and little than herself, and when Hermann Klein became aware of it he filed a petition for divorce, which was granted in December 1901. Kathleen then married Dealtry.