Edith Joan Lyttleton

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Edith Joan Lyttelton (1873 – 1945) was an Australasian author, who wrote as G B Lancaster. She was born in Tasmania, and bought up (from 1879) on a sheep station in Canterbury, New Zealand. She died in London.

She produced 11 novels, a collection of stories, two serialised novels and over 250 stories. She was New Zealand’s most widely read writer of the first half of the twentieth century, writing about the formation of colonial identity and the legacy of imperialism in the lives of settlers and their descendants. Her settings were Australia, Canada and New Zealand. She was influenced by Rudyard Kipling and R. L. Stevenson.

Her first success was with The law-bringers (1913), which was made into a Hollywood feature film in the 1920s (as were The altar stairs and Jim of the ranges). Pageant (1933) topped the American best-seller list for six months. Other successes were Promenade (1938) and Grand Parade (1943). She left New Zealand in 1909 for London, where she died.

She was awarded the Australian Literary Society Gold Medal for an outstanding literary work in the previous calendar year, for Pageant in 1933.