Marjorie Bowen

Marjorie Bowen (1885–1952), born Gabrielle Margaret Vere Campbell, was an English writer of historical fiction, supernatural stories and biography. Raised in poverty by an unstable mother, she wrote The Viper of Milan at sixteen; rejected by eleven publishers as too violent for a girl to have written, it appeared in 1906 and made her famous, and she supported her family by her pen for the rest of her life, producing more than 150 books under several names, including George Preedy and Joseph Shearing, the last for crime novels based on real cases. Graham Greene credited The Viper of Milan with making him a writer.