Violet Fane Biography

Violet Fane was the literary pseudonym of Lady Mary Currie, née Mary Montgomerie Lamb (24 February, 1843, Beauport Park – 13 October 1905, Harrogate), a British novelist, poet and essayist of Victorian era.

She was the daughter of Charles James Savile Montgomerie Lamb and Anna Gray from Beauport Park, and took her pen name from Benjamin Disraeli's novel Vivian Grey (1826). In 1864 she married her first husband, Henry Sydenham Singleton, with whom she had four children. After Singleton's death in 1893, she married (24 January 1894) her second husband, Sir Philip Henry Wodehouse Currie, 1st and last Baron Currie of Hawley. Currie was ambassador to Constantinople from 1843 to 1898 and then ambassador to Rome from 1898 to 1903, where Mary lived with him. As a result of her second marriage, Mary Montgomerie Lamb was styled as Baroness Currie of Hawley on 25 January 1899.