Life
1904-1971; b. London, into a well-known naval family; ed. St. Leonard’s School; m. Patrick Perceval Maxwell, and lived in the Sudan and other colonial regions, settling during the 1930s at his family farm in Co. Down; in 1952 family moved to Headborough, a Georgian country house on the Blackwater in Co. Waterford; her 18th c. historical novel How Small A Part Of Time' (1946) is based on the lives of Anne and Eliza Coughlan of Ardo House, near Ardmore (Waterford); also wrote The Noble Savage (1962), in which Mr Crumlin, an Irish landlord, tries out Rousseau’s educational theories on the son of his girl-friend left in his care, set in Co. Waterford and Brighton; best-known as author of the novel Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton (1945), an aristocrat in league a highwayman, filmed with Margaret Lockhead and James Mason; also wrote The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion; Gay Crusader; Lady Sarah, and num. other Anglo-Irish plots; she wrote a biography of the Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry Frederick Hervey [q.v.] as The Edifying Bishop, 1951). IF2
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References
Desmond Clarke, Ireland in Fiction: A Guide to Irish Novels, Tales, Romances and Folklore [Pt. 2] (Cork: Royal Carbery 1985). lists I Think I Remember (London: Thornton Butterworth 1927), pp.252. [satire on English snob, who lands in Belfast]; Maid of Honour (London: Peter Davies 1936), 317pp. [Waterford, Cork, and London Elizabethan times; heroine mismatched to an Irishman; English Protestant viewpoint on ‘wild native Irish’]; Lord Edward (London: Peter Davies 1943), 291pp. [romantic biography; love for Pamela’; shows enthusiasm and knowledge of facts]; How Small a Part of Time (London: Peter Davies 1946), 292pp. [social climb of the Miss Lynches of Cabra House; immoral love affairs of Anglo-Irish and English (Clarke)]; Tea at Crumbo Castle (London: Peter Davies 1949), 221pp. [on the Blackwater; Lady Charlotte dies in suspicious circumstances; murder ... evictions ... suicide]; The Edifying Bishop (London: Peter Davies 1951),232pp.
Belfast Public Library holds 8 fiction titles incl. The Edifying Bishop [Frederick Hervey] (1951), and Lady Shane’s Daughter (1940); The Venetian Bride (1954), and 18th c. Story (1956).
See website pages on Magdalen King-Hall at the Waterford Museum - online; also The King-Hall Family and Its Connections - online [both accessed 04.09.2023].
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