Author: Adèle Crafton Smith
Author: Adèle Crafton Smith (1844–1922)
Alternate Name(s): Nomad (pseudonym); Stannard (maiden name); Damon (first married name)
Biography: Adèle Marguerite Crafton Smith was born in 1844 in Trouville-sur-Mer, France, the eldest child of railway engineer Robert Stannard (1821–1891). Hers was a remarkable family: her brother Arthur married the novelist Henrietta Palmer (better known as John Strange Winter); her sister Bessie married the author George Augustus Sala; and another sister married actor Charles W. Somerset. In 1867, she married business agent William Cosens Damon and the couple had three children. The marriage was not a happy one and they legally separated in 1874 due to his adultery. By 1881, Adèle was principal of a ladies' college in Yorkshire where under the pseudonym "Nomad" (her then surname reversed) she published a novel Owlscroft (1882). After the death of her husband in 1890, she married the retired merchant Edgar Crafton Smith (his previous wife was the novelist Sydney Lever). She went on to publish several more novels and a collection of poems. She died in 1922 in Dorset.
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References: British Census (1881); Cheltenham Chronicle (2 March 1912); Kemp; The Literary World (16 October 1891); Manchester Times (15 March 1890); pers inf (John Harrington); Probate
Fiction Titles:
- Owlscroft: A Novel. 1 vol. London: Remington, 1882.
- A Railway Foundling: A Novel. 3 vol. London: Trischler, 1890.
- Holly: A Novel. 2 vol. London: Trischler, 1891.