Florence Montgomery

Florence Montgomery (1843–1923) was an English novelist and children's writer. Her 1869 novel Misunderstood was enjoyed by Lewis Carroll and George du Maurier, and by Vladimir Nabokov as a child. Her writings are pious in tone and set in fashionable society. Early life and family She was born Florence Harriet Montgomery in Chelsea, London, on 17 January 1843, the second of the seven surviving children of Admiral Alexander Leslie Montgomery (1807–1888) and his wife Caroline Rose Campbell (1818–1909) of Hampton Court, Middlesex. Her father was also an MP. He succeeded to a baronetcy in 1878. He was a cousin of the novelist Baroness von Tautphoeus (1807–1893). Her cousin, Sibyl Montgomery (died 1935), was the first wife of the Marquess of Queensberry and mother of Lord Alfred Douglas. Florence Montgomery's story-telling abilities were first tried on younger brothers and sisters, but the novelist G. J. Whyte-Melville saw a story of hers printed for a charity bazaar, about a golden-haired girl whose mother dies of scarlet fever, and advised that it should be published. "A Very Simple Story" appeared commercially in 1867 with illustrations by Sibyl Montgomery. Works Montgomery drew a distinction between her stories for children and her stories about children, which were intended for an adult audience as an encouragement to recognize children's merits. Misunderstood (1869), for instance, features an unperceptive father and a son thoughtful and loving before dying young. An edition illustrated by George du Maurier followed in 1873. Writing to Charles L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) about that time, du Maurier remarked, "Miss Florence Montgomery is a very charming and sympathetic young lady, the daughter of the admiral of that ilk. I am, like you, a very great admirer of 'Misunderstood,' and cried buckets over it."