Shadows of Yesterday: 'So corpse-like, so unhuman''

Margaret Gabrielle Vere Campbell was born on 1st November 1885 on Hayling Island in Hampshire.

Her childhood was fraught with problems, her alcoholic father left early in her life and was later found dead on a London Street. Life thereafter was poverty with an uncaring mother.

However, her talents took her to the Slade School of Fine Art and later to study in Paris.

Her first fiction, written at a mere 16, was a violent medieval historical novel, ‘The Viper of Milan’. Initially rejected by several publishers it went on to become a best-seller

After this her prolific writings were the main financial support for the family. Her literary output numbered over 150 volumes, mainly under the pseudonym of Marjorie Bowen but she also used the names Joseph Shearing, George R Preedy, John Winch, Robert Paye and Margaret Campbell. Within this output she assigned the pseudonyms to the various genres she worked across, from Historical fiction to supernatural short stories.

Perhaps her best known work is the 1909 book ‘Black Magic’, a Gothic horror novel about a medieval witch.

Several of her works were also adapted into films.

She was married twice. The first to Zefferino Emilio Constanza (they had two children), who died of tuberculosis, and then to Arthur L Long (and another two children)

Marjorie Bowen died on 23rd December 1952 at St Charles Hospital in North Kensington, London after suffering serious concussion from a fall in her bedroom. She was 67.

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