Frank Danby (1864–1916)

Julia Frankau, née Davis, was born in Dublin, Ireland, the daughter of an Anglo-Jewish photographer and artist. The family moved to London in the early 1860s. She and her sisters were educated at home by Laura Lafargue, a daughter of Karl Marx. Her brother James Davis became a successful musical comedy librettist under the name Owen Hall, and was a friend of Oscar Wilde. In 1883, she married Arthur Frankau, a prosperous cigar merchant, with whom she had four children. She began writing books on prints and engravings, which she collected, and published three books on the subject under her own name. She wrote stories for the Saturday Review, and in 1887 published Dr. Phillips, a Maida Vale Idyll, the first of her 14 novels that appeared under the pseudonym "Frank Danby." She also wrote biographies, including The Life of John Raphael Smith (1902), The Lives of James and William Ward (1904), and The Story of Emma, Lady Hamilton (1910). She was also a co-founder of The Independent Theatre. Her oldest son Gilbert Frankau also became a novelist, as did his daughter Pamela Frankau.