Anna Dean

Anna Dean, the pseudonym for writer Marian Veevers (born 1956), is the listed author of the Dido Kent series of mystery novels.

Biography Marian Veevers was born in Cumberland (now part of Cumbria) in England in 1956. She moved to the Midlands as a child but as she grew older she became determined to return to the Lake District and, after a few years living in Wales, she moved back to Cumbria in 1984. She lives near Ambleside with her husband.

Veevers has worked as an assistant to a psychologist, she has worked for the National Trust, she has taught Creative Writing and worked for the Wordsworth Trust at Grasmere in the Lake District. Veevers has an MA in Creative Writing.

Literary career Veevers adopted the pen name “Anna Dean” for the Dido Kent series of historical crime novels set in the Regency period – the time of Jane Austen.

Under her ‘real name’, Veevers has published an historical novel, ‘Bloodlines’ in 1996 and has also written short stories and monologues for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Cumbria. In 2017, she published 'Jane and Dorothy: A True Tale of Sense and Sensibility', which compares the lives of Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth.

The Dido Kent mysteries are written partly in the form of letters and Veevers has a particular interest in old letters and documents. In 2002–2003, she worked as Writer in Residence for the Cumbria Archive Service where she developed the use of archive material as a source for creative writing.