Capel Boake

Capel Boake

Doris Boake Kerr, a writer who published using the pseudonyms 'Capel Boake'^[1] and Stephen Grey,^[2] was born on 29 August 1889 at Summer Hill, Sydney, and died on 5 June 1944 at Caulfield, Victoria.

Her publishing career began with a story appearing in the Australasian in January 1916. Other stories and stories appeared in the Victorian School Paper. She wrote four novels:

• Painted Clay (Melbourne, 1917, published by the Australasian Authors' Agency and reprinted by Virago London in 1986);
• The Romany Mark (New South Wales Bookstall Co, in 1923 );
• The Dark Thread (Hutchinson London 1936), and
• The Twig is Bent, written with the aid of a Commonwealth literary grant but published posthumously (Sydney, 1946).

Her subject mater included the options available to women in the early twentieth century, circus life, and early Melbourne history.^[1]

She used the pseudonym Stephen Grey when writing in collaboration with Bernard Cronin.^[2]

Capel Boake was also a poet: a collection of her verse was published posthumously in 1949 as The Selected Poems of Capel Boake.

References

1. "Kerr, Doris Boake (1889–1944)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Australian National University. 2000. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
2. "Capel Boake". AustLit. Retrieved 1 April 2015.