Mary Elizabeth Hawker was a Scottish-born writer of novellas and short stories. From 1890, she wrote under the pseudonym Lanoe Falconer.
Early years and education
Mary Elizabeth Hawker was born on 29 January 1848 at Inveraray, Aberdeenshire. She was the oldest daughter of Major Peter William Lanoe Hawker, of the 74th Highlanders, of Longparish House near Whitchurch, Hampshire, and Elizabeth Eraser. Her grandfather was Lieutenant Colonel Peter Hawker, author of Instructions to Young Sportsmen published in 1841. Hawker's education was informal and primarily self-led, as she read many books. Her father died in 1857 and her mother remarried in 1862, to Herbert Fennell, with whom the daughter had a poor relationship. The family lived in France and Germany, where Hawker became proficient in both languages. She was also a pianist.
Career
Hawker early began to write, and a few stories and essays appeared in magazines and newspapers. Her first major work was in 1890, the initial volume of a series of novels issued by Fisher Unwin in the Pseudonym Library, a story by Hawker entitled Mademoiselle Ixe, by Lanoe Falconer. The manuscript had been previously rejected by many publishers. The story, a mystery, is about a heroine who was a governess in an English country house who was connected with Russian nihilists. The Saturday Review declared it to be "one of the finest short stories in England." Gladstone wrote and spoke the praises of the book, of which the circulation was forbidden in Russia. She gave her royalties from it to help Russian exiles. Over 40,000 copies of the English editions were sold, and an American edition was printed, as were translations into French, German, Dutch, and Italian. She subsequently published Cecilia de Noel, a ghost story, and The Hotel d'Angleterre, both in 1891. Her final book, Old Hampshire Vignettes, was published in 1907. Hawker's productivity declined after her mother died on 23 May 1901, as she struggled to maintain her mental and physical health. She died of consumption on 16 June 1908 at Broxwood Court, Herefordshire, and was buried at Lyonshall in the same county. Her nephew – son of her sister, Julia Gordon Lanoe Hawker, and her husband, Henry Colley Hawker, a distant cousin – was the aviator Lanoe Hawker.
Selected works
Mademoiselle Ixe, 1890
Cecilia de Noël, 1891
The Hôtel d'Angleterre and other stories, 1891
Old Hampshire Vignettes, 1907
Her collected stories were published with an introduction by Peter Rowland in 2010.
