Born to Count Henry de la Pasture and his novelist wife, Delafield (1890-1943) was brought up according to strict Late Victorian precepts, but failing to ensnare a husband, she entered a convent in Belgium the moment she was 21. Having recovered from this experience she became a VAD, (voluntary nursing for the war effort) and wrote her first novel. Delafield started publishing in her mid twenties and the year her fourth novel Consequences was published, she married Paul Dashwood, a civil engineer turned land agent; three years in Malaya was followed by life in rural Devon. Many of her novels and short stories are semi-autobiographical or stem from her experiences living abroad and in the rural countryside.
Born in 1890 to Count Henry de la Pasture and his novelist wife, E.M. Delafield was brought up according to strict Late Victorian precepts; upon failing to ensnare a husband at a young age, she entered a convent in Belgium the moment she turned 21. Having recovered from this experience, she later became a VAD (voluntary nursing for the war effort) and wrote her first novel. Delafield began publishing her writing in her mid-twenties; the year her fourth novel, Consequences, was published, she married Paul Dashwood, a civil engineer turned land agent.The pair spent three years in Malaya, followed by a country life in rural Devon; many of Delafield's novels and short stories are semi-autobiographical or stem from her experiences living abroad and in the rural countryside. Delafield died in 1943.