Gertrude Page
BornGertrude Eliza Page
1872 (1872)
Erdington, Warwickshire, England
DiedApril 1, 1922(1922-04-01) (aged 49–50)
Mazoe District, Southern Rhodesia
EducationBedford High School
Notable worksSee #Selected bibliography
Spouse
Alec Dobbin
​
(m. 1902⁠–⁠1922)​

Gertrude Eliza Page (1872 – 1 April 1922) was an Anglo-Rhodesian novelist.[1]

Biography

Educated at Bedford High School, Page wrote for The Girl's Own Paper as a teenager. Marrying George Alexander "Alec" Dobbin in 1902, she moved with him to Rhodesia, where she died in 1922.[1] Her Rhodesia novels were all written between the years 1907 and 1922.[2] In The Rhodesian (1914), Page writes admiringly of agricultural productivity and colonial settlement in her "empty" Rhodesian landscapes: "The Valley of Ruins no longer lies alone and unheeded in the sunlight; and no longer do the hills look down upon rich plains left solely to ... idle pleasures."[2]

Her best-selling book was Paddy the Next Best Thing, which was dramatized and performed in Britain at the Savoy Theatre. Another novel of hers, The Edge O' Beyond, of which more than 300,000 copies were sold, was also made into a play as well as being a 1919 film (directed by Fred W. Durrant, featuring Isobel Elsom, Owen Nares, Minna Grey, C. H. Hallard and Ruby Miller).[3][4]

Selected bibliography

  • Love in the Wilderness, 1907
  • Paddy the Next Best Thing, 1908
  • The Edge O' Beyond, 1908
  • The Silent Rancher, 1909
  • Two Lovers and a Lighthouse, 1910
  • Where the Strange Roads Go Down, 1910
  • Jill's Rhodesian Philosophy, or, The Dam Farm, 1910
  • Winding Paths, 1911
  • The Rhodesian, 1912
  • The Great Splendour - 1912
  • The Pathway, 1914
  • Follow After, 1915
  • Some There Are, 1916
  • The Supreme Desire, 1916
  • The Course of My Ship (with Foster-Melliar), 1918
  • The Veldt Trail, 1919
  • Far From the Limelight (and other tales), 1920
  • Jill on a Ranch, 1922
  • The Mysterious Strangers

References

  1. 1 2 Gertrude Page - “The Kipling of Rhodesia”
  2. 1 2 Empire, nation, gender and romance : the novels of Cynthia Stockley (1872-1936) and Gertrude Page (1873-1922) University of Cape Town. 1997
  3. ↑ "A Popular Novelist – Death of Miss Gertrude Page" - notification in The Times, quoted in "Gertrude Page - 'The Kipling of Rhodesia'". The Woburn Sands Collection.
  4. ↑ Stephen Donovan, "Guns and Roses: Reading for Gender in The Rose of Rhodesia", Screening the Past, 16 August 2009.
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