Josephine Fitzgerald Clarke

Josephine Fitzgerald Clarke (pen name, Errol Fitzgerald; 1865 – 6 June 1953), was a prolific Irish romance novelist who published over 40 novels for Mills & Boon between 1927 and 1953.

Biography Born Bridget Josephine Moylan to Jeremiah Moylan and Mary Fitzgerald of Cork, her mother was the matron and her father the headmaster of the Model School. Her father went on to become a Barrington Lecturer on Political Economy. She was one of ten children. Her oldest brother Michael became a doctor; her oldest sister a school governess and the youngest sister Vida Mary Augusta Constance Moylan (1871-1962) married William Worby Beaumont, an engineer and inventor. Her sister Hannah became the first woman to get a degree in Science in Ireland. In 1873 the family moved to Limerick where they were living when her mother died.

Clarke move to England where she went by Josephine Fitzgerald Moylan. In 1893 she became Lady Josephine Fitzgerald Clarke when she married Sir Frederick William Alfred Clarke (1857-1927), Accountant and Comptroller-General of HM Customs and Excise. Their children were: Eric Fitzgerald Clarke (1894-1917); Desmond Frederick Aubrey Clarke (1896-1984); Gerald Wilfred Francis Clarke (1899-1918), and Philip Edward Joseph Clarke (1907-1973). After her husband died in 1927, Clarke began writing romantic novels under the nom de plume Errol Fitzgerald. She published over 40 novels in the next twenty years.

In her later years she lived in Bedford Park in Chiswick.