Cross, Victoria
Entry updated 1 December 2024. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of India-born UK author Annie Sophie Cory (1868-1952) – also known as Vivian Cross; she was the sister of Adela Florence Nicolson (1875-1904) who wrote as Laurence Hope; early in her career, she was briefly notorious for The Woman Who Didn't (1895), written in response to Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did (1895). Her only known sf is Martha Brown, M.P.: A Girl of To-morrow (1935), which depicts relationships in a Utopian thirtieth-century UK ruled by women: unemployment, war and pollution do not exist, nor is meat eaten, and there is no prostitution because love is free (see Feminism); in the end, however, romantic love seems to triumph again. A final tale of the fantastic, Jim (1937), is a tale of Duende Horror: a man falls in love with a woman visible only at a distance, on a mountain peak; when he catches her at last, she turns out to be a harpy, and he dies watching her eat his heart out. [RB/JC]
Annie Sophie Cory
born Rawalpindi, India: 1 October 1868
died Milan, Italy: 2 August 1952
works
- The Beating Heart (London: The C W Daniel Company, 1924) [coll: "The Vengeance of Pasht" is occult fantasy: hb/]
- Martha Brown, M.P.: A Girl of To-morrow (London: T Werner Laurie, 1935) [hb/Claude Bendall]
- Jim (London: T Werner Laurie, 1937) [hb/]
links
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