{{short description|English novelist and children's writer}} {{About||the American historian|Florence M. Montgomery|the actress|Florence Arliss}} {{Use dmy dates|date=December 2015}} {{Use British English|date=December 2015}} '''Florence Montgomery''' (1843–1923) was an English novelist and children's writer. Her 1869 novel ''Misunderstood'' was enjoyed by Lewis Carroll and George du Maurier, and by Vladimir Nabokov as a child. Her writings are pious in tone and set in fashionable society.
==Early life and family== She was born Florence Harriet Montgomery in Chelsea, London, on 17 January 1843, the second of the seven surviving children of Admiral Alexander Leslie Montgomery (1807–1888) and his wife Caroline Rose Campbell (1818–1909) of Hampton Court, Middlesex. Her father was also an MP. He succeeded to a baronetcy in 1878. He was a cousin of the novelist Baroness von Tautphoeus (1807–1893). Her cousin, Sibyl Montgomery (died 1935), was the first wife of the Marquess of Queensberry and mother of Lord Alfred Douglas.
Florence Montgomery's story-telling abilities were first tried on younger brothers and sisters, but the novelist G. J. Whyte-Melville saw a story of hers printed for a charity bazaar, about a golden-haired girl whose mother dies of scarlet fever, and advised that it should be published. "A Very Simple Story" appeared commercially in 1867 with illustrations by Sibyl Montgomery.
==Works== Montgomery drew a distinction between her stories {{em|for}} children and her stories {{em|about}} children, which were intended for an adult audience as an encouragement to recognize children's merits. ''Misunderstood'' (1869), for instance, features an unperceptive father and a son thoughtful and loving before dying young. An edition illustrated by George du Maurier followed in 1873.<ref name="Feminist">''The Feminist Companion to Literature in English'', eds Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 752.</ref> Writing to Charles L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) about that time, du Maurier remarked, "Miss Florence Montgomery is a very charming and sympathetic young lady, the daughter of the admiral of that ilk. I am, like you, a very great admirer of 'Misunderstood,' and cried buckets over it."<ref>''The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll'' (Read How You Want, US, 2008), p. 247. [https://books.google.com/books?id=WHxut2-D6wAC&q=Montgomery Retrieved 11 January 2016.]</ref>
''Seaforth'' (1878) is a full-length novel for adults. Almost all her works are pious in tone and set in fashionable society. They continued to sell into the 20th century, but by the end of that century they appear to have lost their appeal. One reference book of 1990 comments that "her later works, such as ''Seaforth'', 1878, and ''Colonel Norton'', 1895, have vapid plots and characters."<ref name="Feminist" /> Charlotte Mitchell, in her entry for the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', notes "an undercurrent of animosity against the modern young woman... for example Lady Jane Marton in ''Tony: a Sketch'' (1898), a hard, selfish, bicycling creature..."<ref name="ODNB" >Charlotte Mitchell: Montgomery, Florence... In: ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004). [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/55637 Retrieved 21 October 2010]</ref> Vladimir Nabokov, on the other hand, recalls in his memoir ''Speak Memory'' that ''Misunderstood'' was the first English book his mother read to him, and "the fate of its hero Humphrey used to bring a more specialised lump to one's throat than anything in Dickens or Daudet."<ref>Quoted by Jean Perrot in ''Henry James and the Poetics of Duplicity'', ed. Dennis Tredy, Annick Duperray and Adrian Harding (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2013), p. 7 [https://books.google.com/books?id=SOcxBwAAQBAJ&dq=%22Florence+Montgomery%22+writer&pg=PA17 Retrieved 11 January 2016.]</ref>
Almost all of Montgomery's novels were translated into German and French, and some into Italian, Dutch and Russian. ''Misunderstood'' has had two film adaptations: the Italian film ''Incompreso'' in 1966,<ref>IMDb [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060538/ Retrieved 21 October 2010.]</ref> and the American film ''Misunderstood'' in 1984.<ref>IMDb [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087730/ Retrieved 21 October 2010.]</ref>
==Personal life== Montgomery never married, and had no children. She lived her whole life in the family home in Belgravia, London, along with two likewise unmarried sisters.<ref name="ODNB" />
==Death== Montgomery died of breast cancer on 8 October 1923.<ref name="ODNB" />
==Bibliography== {{Portal |Children's literature}} {{columns-list|colwidth=30em| *''A Very Simple Story'' (1866) *''Peggy and Other Tales'' (1868) *''Misunderstood'' (1869) *''Thrown Together'' (1872) *''Thwarted'' (1873) *''Wild Mike and his Victim'' (1874) *''Seaforth'' (1878) *''The Blue Veil'' (1883) *''Transformed'' (1886) *''The Fisherman's Daughter'' (1888) *''Colonel Norton'' (1895) *''Tony'' (1897) *''Prejudged'' (1900) *''An Unshared Secret and Other Stories'' (1903) *''Cats and Kitts'' (1910) *''Behind the Scenes in a Schoolroom'' (1914) }}
==References== {{Reflist|30em}}
==External links== {{Commons category}} *{{Cite NIE|wstitle=Montgomery, Florence |short=x}} *Good-quality online reproduction of ''Misunderstood'' (PDF) [https://archive.org/details/misunderstood00montgoog Retrieved 11 January 2016].
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Montgomery, Florence}} Category:1843 births Category:1923 deaths Category:English women children's writers Category:19th-century English women novelists Category:19th-century English novelists Category:Writers from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Category:People from Chelsea, London Category:Victorian novelists Category:Victorian women writers