Best known work

• Sophy, or, The Adventures of a Savage, 1881

Other well known work(s)

• 'Lancelot and Guinevere' in From Dawn to Noon, 1872
• The Queen of the Fairies, 1877
• Poems, 1892

Genres

• Poetry

Nom de plume

Lady Mary Montgomery Currie, Lady Mary Montgomery Lamb, Mary Singleton, "V", Pamela Kajin, Vera

Social class

Upper class

Parental background

Her mother's origins are humbler: Anne Charlotte Gray was the daughter of a draper and an alleged smuggler, and she was rumoured to have had gipsy forebears. Her father, however, was the heir of the baronetcy of Burville, Berkshire, and Beauport, He died under suspicious circumstances (very likely suicide) before he inherited the title, which then passed on to Fane's brother, Archibald.

At publication of best known work

• Age: 38
• Marital status: Married
• Number of children: 4

Physical description

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt describes Fane as 'being extremely pretty of some dark-eyed gipsy type ' in MS 43-1975 Alms to Oblivion Vol. 4. There is also an auto-description of Fane in her semi-autobiographical novel, Sophy, or, the Adventures of a Savage : "I really do think that I have rather nice eyes. […] If only they were blue! […] But they are, unfortunately, brown. […] My mouth is smallish, […] my teeth are very even and white. [My nose is] Roman in profile, Greek in full-face, and in certain positions tiptilted, like the petal of a flower. […] My hair is very long, […] it is all of different shades, which has an absurd effect in daylight, but at night, I am happy to say, it looks black."

Did you know?

In her biography that is clearly written by herself and appeared as a preface to her 1892 poetry collection, Poems in Two Volumes, Fane claims to be descended from the notorious rake John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester on her father's side. She backs that up unintentionally with her own extramarital escapades - at one point in the 1870s, she had three lovers and a husband simultaneously, an account of which can be seen in Edwin and Angelina Papers (1878).

Additional information

There is little open access biographical information about Fane other then her Wikipedia entry and a brief mention in the At the Circulating Library database.