F. M. Mayor
FLORA MACDONALD MAYOR was born in Kingston in 1872. After reading history at Newnham College, Cambridge, she briefly became an actress. She published her first book, a collection of short stories entitled Mrs Hammond’s Children, under a pseudonym in 1901. An engagement in 1903 ended in tragedy, with her fiancée dying of typhoid in India. Success came with her first novel, The Third Miss Symons, in 1913. The novella Miss Browne’s Friend followed in 1914-15, published serially. Two other novels, The Rector’s Daughter and The Squire’s Daughter, which expanded upon the theme which became her signature, the vicissitudes of the lives of single women in her time, were published after the war. She died in 1932 at the age of 59. In 1935, her ghost stories were collected under the title The Room Opposite.
