Mrs Henry de la Pasture


Mrs Henry de la Pasture, born Elizabeth Lydia Rosabelle Bonham, and after her second marriage styled Lady Clifford, was an English novelist, dramatist and children's writer.

Biography

She was born Elizabeth Lydia Rosabelle Bonham in Naples, daughter of Edward Bonham of Bramling, Kent, a British consul.
A Catholic, she married in 1887 Henry Philip Ducarel de la Pasture of Llandogo Priory, Monmouthshire. The couple were living at Aldrington, near Hove, when the elder of their two daughters was born in 1890. Known by the pseudonym E. M. Delafield, she authored the Provincial Lady series, but predeceased her mother in 1943. However, she failed to mention her mother in her Who's Who entry. The younger daughter, Yolande Friedl, was a medical doctor, who died in London in 1976.
Her first marriage ended in 1908 with the death of her husband. Two years later she remarried Sir Hugh Clifford, a colonial administrator. Between 1912 and 1929, they lived successively in the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Ceylon and Singapore. He ended his career as Governor of the Straits Settlements.
In 1918 Elizabeth was appointed a CBE.
Clifford was a friend of the novelist Joseph Conrad.

Works

Fiction

Extra titles and information: