Alice Louisa Dudeney (née Whiffin; 21 October 1866 – 21 November 1945) was an English author and short story writer. The wife of Henry Dudeney, a fellow author and inventor of mathematical puzzles and games, she used the style Mrs. Henry Dudeney for much of her literary career. She herself became a popular writer in her lifetime, who was often compared to Thomas Hardy for her portrayals of Sussex regional life. She had over fifty volumes of fiction published between 1898 and 1937.
Fiction
Called "one of the most powerful writers of fiction among modern English women" by Putnam's Magazine, she is noted for her novels A Man with a Maid (1897), Folly Corner (1899), Maternity of Harriott Wicken (1899), and Spindle and Plough (1901) and was a regular contributor to Harper's Magazine. In 1928, Arthur St. John Adcock wrote, "No woman novelist today writes more objectively or with a stronger imaginative realism in the creation of character and the designing of a story."
Dudeney was best known for her dramatic and romance fiction, though her books frequently touched upon social issues affecting the English working and lower middle classes. She was often touted by her publishers as "the novelist of the Weald and the Marsh and the Down Countries". She is also considered an early Victorian feminist writer, whose popular "marriage-problem" novels, along with those of her contemporary, M. P. Willcocks, showed female characters who were often frustrated with problems in their own marriages.
Diary
In 1998, author Diana Crook edited and published Dudeney's personal diaries, entitling them A Lewes Diary: 1916–1944. These describe her life in Lewes with Henry Dudeney before and during the interwar years. The book's success brought renewed interest in her work and resulted in several of her novels being reprinted in 2008 and 2009.
Biography
Alice Dudeney was born to Frederick Whiffin, a master tailor, and his wife Susan Howe in Brighton on 21 October 1866. She was educated in Hurstpierpoint, a region of West Sussex which she would use as a setting for her later novels, and later introduced to 25-year-old Henry Dudeney through a mutual friend. The two were married at St. Andrew Church, Holborn, London on 3 November 1884.
The couple rented a house in Great James Street, Bedford Row, close to the printing houses. Dudeney, then an aspiring writer, wrote a few short stories intended for publication, but much of her time was taken up as a housewife and expectant mother. Their first child, Phyllis Mary, was born in May 1887, but died aged four months.
Distraught over the loss of their baby, Dudeney stopped writing for a time and took a job as assistant secretary to the head of the Cassells publishing firm, Sir Wemyss Reid. The literary atmosphere of Cassells eventually prompted her to return to writing and would later launch her career as a novelist, by way of three short stories that appeared in Cassell journals. Her connections with Cassells also gave Henry another outlet for his work.
The couple's second child, Margery Janet, was born in 1890. They decided to move away from London to a rented cottage near the Surrey/Sussex border, in a small hamlet north of Billingshurst. There they found themselves preferring life in the countryside. After some years they were able to purchase a three-acre plot of land on the outskirts of Horsell. With the help of Henry's brother-in-law, Maurice Pocock, then living with his wife, Kate Dudeney, in nearby Chertsey, they planned the construction of a country estate named Littlewick Meadow in 1897. The house was so large that they hired several servants to help them run it. Having a common interest in antique furniture, they also attended sales in the local area and furnished their home with a unique collection of Jacobean and later period antiques.
Much of Dudeney's personal life could be described as very domestic. In a Who's Who interview, her hobbies were listed as "gardening and collecting old oak furniture". She was also involved in the restoration of nearby historic homes that had fallen into disrepair.