Capel Boake

Capel Boake

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