Lady Gwendolen Cecil (1860-1945)

Lady Gwendolen Georgiana Gascoyne-Cecil
Author, Biographer
Born July 28, 1860, London, England
Died September 28, 1945, Hertfordshire, Hertford, England

Gwendolen Georgiana Gascoyne-Cecil was born on July 28, 1860, in London, England. She was the daughter of Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830-1903), and the former Georgina Charlotte Alderson (1827-1899). Gwendolen's father, the Marquess of Salisbury, also known as Lord Robert Cecil and Lord Salisbury, was a member of Parliament, secretary of state for India, British foreign secretary, and three-time prime minister of the United Kingdom. His wife was his literary assistant and the mother of his eight children. She also wrote political articles for publication in the Saturday Review and the Quarterly Review.

Lady Gwendolen Cecil was an author and her father's biographer. She wrote a short story called "The Little Ray," published in The Pall Mall Magazine in August 1894. She was also the anonymous author of "The Closed Cabinet," which was in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (Vol. CLVII, No. DCCCLI) in January 1895. Her major work was her four-volume biography of her father, entitled Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury (1921, 1932). "The Closed Cabinet" was her lone story in Weird Tales, and it was reprinted anonymously.

Lady Gwendolen died on September 28, 1945, in Hertfordshire, Hertford, England. She was eighty-five years old. She has a cultivar of the peony named after her, a distinction no doubt unique among contributors to "The Unique Magazine."

Lady Gwendolen Cecil's Story in Weird Tales
"The Closed Cabinet" as by _____ _____ (May 1923)

Further Reading
Not much that I have found or of note except in old newspaper articles, including a number that describe her being in an automobile accident in 1908. She was run over by her own electric vehicle after having gotten out to open a gate.

Gwendolen Gascoyne-Cecil (1860-1945) in a portrait drawn in 1895 by Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898).

Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley