Elizabeth Lydia Rosabelle, Lady Clifford ( Bonham, formerly de la Pasture; 1866 – 30 October 1945), as known as Mrs Henry de la Pasture, was an English novelist, dramatist and children's writer. Her children's novel The Unlucky Family has been called a classic of its genre.

Biography

She was born Elizabeth Lydia Rosabelle Bonham in Naples, daughter of Edward Bonham of Bramling, Kent, a British consul. A Roman Catholic, she married, in 1887, Henry Philip Ducarel de la Pasture of Llandogo Priory, Monmouthshire. The couple moved at Aldrington, near Hove, when Edmée, the elder of their two daughters was born in 1890. Edmée was known by the pseudonym E. M. Delafield (married name Edmée Dashwood) and authored the Provincial Lady series, but predeceased her mother in 1943, whom she failed to mention in her Who's Who entry. The younger daughter, Yolande Friedl, called Yoé, was a medical doctor, who died in London in 1976. Her first marriage ended in 1908 with the death of her husband. Two years later she married Sir Hugh Clifford, a colonial administrator and a friend of the novelist Joseph Conrad, with whom she lived between 1912 and 1929 successively in the Gold Coast (where she edited an album in 1908), Nigeria, Ceylon and Singapore. He ended his career as Governor of the Straits Settlements. In 1918, she was appointed a CBE.

Works

Fiction

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Plays