Cynthia Stockley

Cynthia Stockley (7 July 1873 – 15 January 1936) was a South African-Rhodesian novelist known for her romance novels usually set in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa. Her name before her marriage was Lilian Julian Webb. Cynthia was an adopted name.

Biography Stockley was born in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State. Her mother, Mary Ann Webb (Corbett), emigrated from County Clare in Ireland at the age of 18, in 1859, whilst her father, Abel Arthur Webb, arrived from Northamptonshire, England, in 1861, at the age of 23.

Her mother died when Cynthia was two. Her father subsequently remarried, and Cynthia then lived with four siblings (one died in infancy), her step-mother, a half-sister, and two half-brothers. After attending St. Michael's School, Bloemfontein, she moved to live with her sister in Mashonaland.

In 1895 she married Philip Stockley (1870–1917), a member of the Mashonaland Mounted Police, in Salisbury (now Harare). They moved to Umtali (now Mutare) where her daughter Dorothy was born in 1896.

The Stockleys separated later in 1896: she to take up a career in journalism and writing, he to participate in the Boer War. Thinking Philip had been killed in the Boer War, she remarried. Her husband was Joseph Byrne (1870–1945), an Irish doctor in New York; their son Patrick was born there in 1905 pp99. She is buried in Sheringham, Norfolk.

Career Stockley wrote her first novel in her adopted country, with Virginia of the Rhodesians (1903). In The Claw (1911), Stockley's heroes are heavily impacted by the powerful African landscape: "Africa has kissed him on the mouth and he will not leave her."

Novels Her 16 books included: Virginia of the Rhodesians, London: Hutchinson 1903 Poppy: the Story of a South African Girl, London: Hurst and Blackett 1909 The Claw, London: Hurst and Blackett 1911 The Dream Ship [Wanderfoot in America], London: Hurst and Blackett 1913 Blue Aloes: Stories of South Africa, London: Hutchinson 1918 Ponjola, London: Constable 1923 Tagati, London: Constable 1930

Films With the advent of silent film several of her books were made into films: Poppy (1917) The Claw (1918) Wild Honey (1922) Ponjola (1923) The Female (1924) The Claw (1927)

Other Pink Gods (1922), an adaptation of her story "Pink Gods and Blue Demons"