Mary Patricia ‘Mollie’ Panter-Downes was a British novelist and a columnist for
The New Yorker. She was born to Major Edward Martin Panter-Downes, a member of the Royal Irish Regiment who died in 1914 at the Battle of Mons, and Marie Kathleen Cowley, who was of Irish origin. After her father died, she was brought up in Brighton by her mother. She married Clare Robinson in 1927, and the couple moved to Chiddingfold in Surrey.
As a child she wrote plays and poetry, some of these printed in Poetry Review before she was 12; at Heathfield House School she established the school magazine. Her professional writing career began when she was only seventeen. Her novel The Shoreless Sea became a bestseller, with eight editions published in 1923 and 1924; the book was also serialised in The Daily
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Citation: Turner, Nick. "Mollie Panter-Downes". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 June 2020 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3472, accessed 20 April 2024.]
