By all accounts an exceptionally private person, it probably suited Broster to
publish her works under the relative anonymity of ‘D K'. Such was her success
in keeping her personal life from public view that when she died many of her
readers were surprised to find that she was neither a man nor a Scot. Her
heyday as an author was the 1920's and 30's during which period most of her 15
historical novels were published. She chose post-revolutionary France and
Jacobite Scotland as the setting for her major works, not too surprising as she
had read Modern History at St Hilda's College, Oxford (1896-98). It was
following a rain-sodden stay in Scotland in 1923 that she began what was to
become her most successful and critically acclaimed work, The Flight of
the Heron . Published in 1925, it was the first volume in her Jacobite
Trilogy with The Gleam in the North (1927), and The
Dark Mile (1929). Reprints of these works have been fairly regular,
assisted by television adaptations by Scottish TV (1968) and BBC (1976). In
addition to her historical works Broster was also an accomplished writer of
supernatural short stories and her work Couching at the Door has
been included in many anthologies .
Dorothy Kathleen Broster was born 2
September 1877 at Devon Lodge (now known as Monksferry House), Grassendale
Park, Liverpool, the eldest of four children of Thomas Mawdsley Broster, a
shipowner, and his wife Emily Kathleen, née Gething. In the
1891 census Dorothy is shown as a ‘boarder' at a school located in Wensted ,
Grassendale Park, Liverpool, about a mile from what was then the family home at
10 Woolton Road, Garston. She subsequently attended Cheltenham Ladies' College
after her parents had moved to the town when she was 16. After leaving Oxford
she undertook secretarial work until becoming a full time writer. She died on 7
February 1950 in Bexhill and was cremated at Charing crematorium, Kent. An obituary in The Scotsman described her as "upright and downright impish.....a lovable creature whose delightful novels made her known to thousands".
