Clemence Dane

Clemence Dane pseud. of Winifred Ashton, 1888-1965, English novelist and playwright. She was an artist, teacher, and actress before she turned to writing. Her first novel, A Regiment of Women (1917), is a compelling study of the hothouse emotional life in a girls' school. Legend (1919), concerns a young girl who devotes her life to her deranged father; Dane made it into a play called Bill of Divorcement (1921), which starred Katherine Cornell. Dane wrote many other novels and plays.

Dane, Clemence, the pseudonym of Winifred Ashton (1888–1965), playwright and novelist, whose first play, A Bill of Divorcement (1921), had a success never quite matched by her later works. Her novels include Regiment of Women (1917) and Legend (1919).

Dane, Clemence [ Winifred Ashton] (1888–1965), English dramatist and novelist, who took her pseudonym from the church of St Clement Danes in the Strand, London. She acted for a few years as Diana Cortis, but the success of her first play A Bill of Divorcement (1921), which deals sympathetically with the problem of divorce on the grounds of insanity, led her to abandon acting. The play gave Katharine Cornell one of her first successes in New York. Among Clemence Dane's later plays were Will Shakespeare (also 1921), Naboth's Vineyard, Granite (both 1926), and Wild Decembers (1932), a play on the Brontës in which Diana Wynyard played Charlotte, Beatrix Lehmann Emily, and Emlyn Williams Branwell. Her last play, Eighty in the Shade (1958), was specially written for Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson, who played the leading parts. Several of her novels deal with the theatre. She was also an excellent sculptor, and her bust of Ivor Novello stands in the foyer of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.