Violet Needham

Amy Violet Needham (5 June 1876, Mayfair – 8 June 1967, London), Needham was the daughter of Colonel Charles Needham, of the 1st Life Guards (illegitimate son of Francis Needham, 2nd Earl of Kilmorey) and Henriette Amélie Charlotte Vincentia (known as 'Amy'), daughter of Dutch aristocrat Vincent Gildemeester Baron van Tuyll van Serooskerken, who had made a fortune in East Indian tin. Charles Needham was a gambler and their finances fluctuated considerably. Violet and her sister Evelyn were educated at home, a common practice for women of their day and social standing.

Needham's early life, spent moving between houses large and small in England and on the continent, is seen as providing the basis for many of her books.

Adult life

The family spent summer holidays in Europe, and lived there for six years when Needham and her sister were young women, their father being military attaché at Rome from 1895 to 1901.

Still living at Tylehurst with her parents, Needham participated in the London season for some years. Summers the Needhams visited family on the continent. Needham's half Dutch mother had four sisters who had variously married English, Austrian, and Dutch nationals, this last the owner of Huys Clingendael, a convenient reunion locale where Needham told stories to younger cousins "Dutch, French, Austrian and English" historical, and contemporary. The eleven Ruritanian novels, sometimes known as the Empire series or the Stormy Petrel series, are set in three fictional countries in Eastern Europe: the Empire, Flavonia, and Ornowitza, the latter being a small duchy between the other two.

The Ruritanian novels fall into two groups. Some, like The Black Riders and The Stormy Petrel are set in the early twentieth century. Others, such as The Woods of Windri and The Changeling of Monte Lucio are set in an undefined mediaeval period with monasteries playing an important role.

Her first novel, The Black Riders, introduces the hero Dick Fauconbois, known as the "Stormy Petrel". He lives in the Empire, although he visits Flavonia during the course of the novel. It is the story of an orphan boy who becomes a member of a secret rebel movement led by a saint-like figure called Far-Away Moses. Their chief enemy is Count Jasper, known as Jasper the Terrible, the chief of the paramilitary Black Riders. The villain Jasper is described as a darkly attractive character, whose allure is felt by the main female heroine, Wych Hazel. The novelist and poet Michele Roberts described how her childhood reading of The Black Riders "both turned me on and made me feel guilty. Secret pleasure reading it; secret guilt."

Needham is known for writing "characters remarkable among the children's books of the period for having real moral dilemmas, and faults as well as virtues."