Alice Dryden

Alice Dryden (later Marcon, 3 August 1866 – 4 February 1956) was an English photographer, historian and writer. She published books and articles about the history of various Midlands counties illustrated with her own photographs, and is also remembered for her work on the history of lace. Her name was Alice Marcon after 1913.

Early life Dryden was born on 3 August 1866, at the Elizabethan manor house of Canons Ashby in Northamptonshire. Her parents were Sir Henry Dryden and Lady Frances Dryden , who had married when they were 47 and 42 respectively. She was their only child. Sir Henry Dryden was a principal local landowner and a magistrate.

Dryden received a "smattering" of education of the kind considered suitable for girls of the "squirearchy" class, according to an obituary. She had a scholarly side and took an interest in her father's antiquarian pursuits. As a young woman she enjoyed following hounds and horse racing. This new History of Lace, "entirely revised, re-written, and enlarged under the editorship of M. Jourdain and Alice Dryden" came out in 1901 and was republished several times between then and 1984.

Activism Dryden helped to establish and was the Honorary Secretary of the Northamptonshire Home Arts and Industries Association, which encouraged a revival of lace-making and other crafts.

In the 1880s and 1890s Dryden was also active in the Primrose League,

Flemish bobbin-made tape lace, 17th century, photographed by Alice Dryden. She edited her father's work on hunting and published it in 1908 as The art of hunting: or, three hunting mss. A revised edition of the art of hunting, by William Twici, huntsman to King Edward the Second. The craft of venery. A translation of La chasse du cerf. A review in the Times Literary Supplement praised this book, which had been printed in an earlier version in 1843/4 with a very limited circulation, and said that Dryden's notes along with her father's previously unpublished notes made the work far more "intelligible". It also mentioned her historical research into the real-life identity of the huntsman Twici or Twiti. An obituary described it as her "magnum opus".

Later life On 6 April 1913 Dryden married John Marcon in London and they went to live in Highclere, Hampshire. After contracting polio in 1919 her ability to walk was restricted. and some antiques related to textiles and social history to the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. Photographs taken by Dryden are held in the archives of Historic England and the Conway Library at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.