Gladys Skelton


Gladys Skelton was an Australian and United Kingdom poet, novelist and playwright who wrote using the pseudonym John Presland.

Early life

Gladys Skelton was born Gladys Williams in Melbourne in 1885.

Career

Skelton gained history honours at Girton College, Cambridge University and was a university lecturer in English literature and lecturer in history and economics. She was one of a group of women writers who used a male pseudonym. In 1928, after a charge by Lord Birkenhead that women writers were inferior, she wrote in their defence and of her use of a pseudonym.

Personal life

In 1920 Skelton obtained a divorce from her husband John Herbert Skelton on the grounds of desertion and adultery but the decree nisi was rescinded in 1921. Skelton married Francis Edmund Bendit in Hampstead in March 1943.
She died in England in 1975.

Selected works

Novels

Frustration Dominion - based on the life of Cecil RhodesBarricade Escape me - Never! Mosaic The Charioteer
  • ''Albatross''

Poetry

The Deluge and Other Poems Songs of Changing Skies Poems of London and Other Verses The Shaken Reed
  • ''Selected Poems''

Plays

The Marionettes - a puppet showJoan of Arc - historical dramaMary Queen of Scots - historical dramaManin and the Defence of Venice Marcus Aurelius Belisarius, General of the East King Monmouth
  • ''Satni''

Non-fiction

Vae Victis: the life of Ludwig von Benedek, 1804-1881.
  • ''Women in the civilized state''