Bryan Mary Angell (née Doyle) and H. Ripley Cromarsh

We know that Arthur Conan Doyle was already a well accomplished author by this time, but what of his sister? While conducting online research on the Arthur-conan-doyle.com website I found Doyle’s sister was named, Bryan Mary Julia Josephine Doyle, also known affectionately as Dodo, who wrote under the pen name H.R. Cromarsh.

First published by Doyle’s friend, Grant Richards in 1903, her first book, The Episodes of Marge: Memoirs of a Humble Adventuress, seemingly went relatively un-noticed in the literary field, rather eliciting complaints from reviewers that the book cover of “a fashionably dressed young woman carrying a bandbox” does not match the story of “the daughter of a labourer in a Cumberland village’ who ‘had a natural aptitude for wrongdoing” (The Academy, 1903, p.60). Indeed, the Saturday Review suggested that “Mr. Cromarsh, in fact, has idealised crime in that Bulwer-Lytton spirit”, presenting “spirited scenes of burglary” in which “an ex-milliner’s apprentice”, Marge “joins a gang of thieves”, such that “the author and the purchaser of the book of her adventures have a legitimate grievance against the execrable taste shown by the publisher in stamping upon the cover a vulgarly suggestive picture libelling the heroine” (1903, p. 240). The first copy of the second tale, The Secret of the Moor Cottage which was first published in Boston, Massachusetts in 1906 by the now defunct, Small, Maynard & Co. publishing company and later published by Ward Lock and Co. of London, was reviewed by The Academy, dated March 30^th, 1907, and states, “of the book itself it may be said that it is no better nor worse than many others in its class” and goes on to say that “it compares vary favourably with many modern successes” (p. 320).

After gaining a modicum of success in this field, Bryan then went on to marry Reverend Charles Cyril Angell to become, Bryan Mary Angell (Barquin, 2024). In an interview with the Daily Mirror, “Mr. Cromarsh” declared that “she had always been fond of writing”. She continued, “I have written two novels already,” she said, “and hope to write many more. But I am so fond of motor-cycling – I sometimes do forty miles a day – that I am rather a slow worker” (1907, p. 5). Angell went on to publish a volume of verse named, At the Waters Strife, under her married name in 1918, and sadly passed away on the 8^th of February 1927 aged just 49, in Paulton Somerset. Bryan was laid to rest at All Saints Church, Dunkerton, Somerset (Barquin, 2024).