Eleanor Farjeon

Born: 1881 | Died: 1965 | Grave: H 104 | Category: Literature | Tags: Cat Stevens, Children’s Books, Edward Thomas, Songs, Theatre, Writer

Author and poet, writer of children’s books and, with her brother Herbert, of musical plays and revues. Her poetry included Morning has broken, now a popular hymn. She won many literary awards.  Eleanor began her life in the Victorian Age and ended it in the fast-changing age of the 1960s. Educated at home, she spent much…

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Eliza Acton

Born: 1799 | Died: 1859 | Grave: I 047 | Category: Literature | Tags: Cookery, Delia Smith, History of Food, Mrs Beeton, Poet, Writer

Eliza Acton wrote the first modern English cookery book,  Modern Cookery for Private Families, aimed at the ordinary reader rather than at professional cooks. She introduced the now-universal practice of listing the ingredients and suggested cooking times with each recipe. She moved to Hampstead in the 1850s, living in Keats Grove. Isabella Beeton’s bestselling Mrs…

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Penelope Fitzgerald

Born: 1916 | Died: 2000 | Grave: Q 091 | Category: Literature

Author. Daughter of Punch editor E V Knox and his first wife Christina Hicks. Studied at Oxford, worked for BBC during WW2 and taught in the 1960s. Published biographies of Edward Burne-Jones (1975),, The Knox brothers (1977), – about her father and three uncles, and five novels. She was shortlisted for the Booker prize for…

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Edmund George Valpy Knox

Born: 1881 | Died: 1971 | Grave: Q 091 | Category: Literature

Poet and satirist. Known as E V Knox or Evoe. Editor of Punch (1932-49),. He was son of a Bishop of Lahore, and brother of Ronald, the theologian, Dilly, a cryptographer, and Wilfred, a Bible scholar. He lived many years in Hampstead at 34 Well Walk, and latterly at 110 Frognal. He was active on…

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Edward Harry William Meyerstein

Born: 1889 | Died: 1952 | Grave: V 003 | Category: Literature

Poet, novelist and biographer. He was the subject of a memoir by John Wain in Sprightly Running. Did he write his own epitaph? Memoriae sacrum – ask not who he was! / Transparent was his character as glass; / Words were his life, a verbal grace his aim, / This stone records an unremembered name.

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Sir Sidney Colvin

Born: 1845 | Died: 1927 | Grave: I 030 | Category: Literature

Literary and art critic, author of several books on Keats, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at British Museum. In 1903 married Frances, widow of Revd Albert Hurt Sitwell. They were both friends of Robert Louis Stevenson. Colvin brought the sickly Stevenson to Abernethy House, Mount Vernon on several occasions for a Hampstead health cure.

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Lady Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie

Born: 1837 | Died: 1919 | Grave: H 015 | Category: Literature

Elder daughter of Thackeray, sister-in-law of Leslie Stephen, and member of a large literary circle. She wrote many novels and a biogaphical work about her father and his friends. In 1877 she married her cousin, 15 years her junior, Sir Richmond Ritchie.

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Clara Leigh (nee Hook), Hunt

Born: 1822 | Died: 1847 | Grave: I 035 | Category: Literature

Wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley Leigh Hunt, one of the many children of the poet, who lived in the Vale of Health c1815-21. Percy was at 3 Holly Hill in the 1850s.

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Donald Carswell

Born: 1882 | Died: 1940 | Grave: H 012 | Category: Literature

Journalist, barrister, biographer, critic, playwright, Civil Servant, devoted lover and true friend. Born Glasgow, killed in a blackout accident in London, he was husband of Catherine Carswell (1878-1946), of Glasgow….’poet, critic and biographer, wife, mother and courageous friend…full of eager spirit’. The Carswells were close friends and helpers of D H Lawrence, about whom Catherine…

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George Busson Du Maurier

Born: 1834 | Died: 1896 | Grave: I Bay | Category: Literature

Punch cartoonist and author of Trilby and other novels. He lived most of the last half of his life in Hampstead, which reminded him of his birthplace, Paris. From 1870-74 he was at 27 Church Row and from 1874-95 at New Grove House, Hampstead Grove, which bears his plaque. The motto on his grave comes…

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Dr Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad

Born: 1891 | Died: 1953 | Grave: J 091 | Category: Literature

Prodigious writer, popular broadcaster, inspiring teacher. Was Head of Philosophy Dept at Birkbeck College, became famous in the Brains Trust on radio and television. His last book was The Recovery of Belief (1952),; he had re-converted to Christianity after being an agnostic for most of his life. Championed mixed hockey on the Heath.

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Richard Whiteing

Born: 1841 | Died: 1928 | Grave: K 032 | Category: Literature

Author of No. 5 John Street and other works; the former was filmed in 1921. Whiteing was also a successful journalist. In 1869 he married the niece of the first US Minister to Japan ‘DNB’.

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Alfred Richard Orage

Born: 1873 | Died: 1934 | Grave: L 093 | Category: Literature

Journalist, lecturer and editor. Editor of New Age (1907-22) and New English Weekly (from 1932). Published works on Nietzche, Consciousness, etc. His grave is marked with his divided circle, which he called ‘a picture of man’. Orage’s grave was designed by Eric Gill and the symbol on the grave is called an Enneagram. I have come…

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William Comyns Beaumont

Born: 1879 | Died: 1955 | Grave: O 090 | Category: Literature

Journalist, author and lecturer. Created (1903), and edited The Bystander magazine (later The Graphic),. Was also Literary Editor of The Illustrated London News (1940),.

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Evelyn Underhill

Born: 1875 | Died: 1941 | Grave: P 080 | Category: Literature

Religious writer, poet and mystic. Served in Admiraly intelligence in World War I but became a pacifist. Influenced by Baron Friedrich von Hugel, who lived in Hampstead, and ‘she devoted herself to giving spiritual direction, retreats etc.’ ‘DNB’ She often stayed with her friend, Mrs Vernon, at 12 Hampstead Square where she died.

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Sara Jackson

Born: 1910 | Died: 1984 | Grave: P 095 | Category: Literature

Poet. She lived in Prospect Place, overlooking the new graveyard which she lovingly tended and beautified with flowers and shrubs.

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Eva Gore-Booth

Born: 1870 | Died: 1926 | Grave: B 027 | Categories: Literature, Politics | Tags: Campaigner, Christabel Pankhurst, Esther Roper, Pacifist, Poet, Suffragette, Trade unions, Women's rights, Writer

Eva Gore-Booth was an Irish poet and dramatist, but was primarily known as a committed suffragette, social worker and labour activist.  She was involved in adult education for women and in the women’s trade union movement.  Eva was also a pacifist, and during World War I she argued strongly against persuading young men to join…

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Ernest Radford

Born: 1857 | Died: 1919 | Grave: G 102 | Category: Literature

Ernest and his wife Dollie (1858-1920), were poets and Fabians, with a large literary circle which included D H Lawence. He portrayed them not unkindly in his novel Kangaroo. They put up him and his wife Frieda frequently at their home at 32 Well Walk; they lived previously at 16 East Heath Road.

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Edith Alice Mary Hepburn

Born: 1884 | Died: 1947 | Grave: G 056 | Category: Literature

Poet under name Anna Wickham, and friend of D H Lawrence and his circle. Lived at 49 Downshire Hill from 1909 and at 68 Parliament Hill from 1919.

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Florence Mabel Quiller-Couch

Born: c1866 | Died: 1924 | Grave: G 032 | Category: Literature

One of 5 siblings of Arthur Quiller-Couch, writer and critic (1863 – 1944),. She was herself an English editor, compiler and children’s writer. Lived in Hampstead with her sister Lilian, also a writer, with whom she produced some joint works.

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Arthur Waugh

Born: 1866 | Died: 1943 | Grave: F 018 | Category: Literature

Managing director of publishers Chapman & Hall [1902-30], and father of Alec and Evelyn Waugh. The family lived at 11 Hillfield Road (1878 – 1907), and at 145 North End Road (1908 – 1933),. The motto on his grave reads ‘And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life’.

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Edward Bell

Born: 1844 | Died: 1926 | Grave: F 010 | Category: Literature

Elder son of publisher George Bell (d 1890), and chairman of the family firm, also President of the Publishers Association. Lived many years in Hampstead.

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Peter Cook

Born: 1937 | Died: 1995 | Grave: E/ F Bay | Category: Literature

Writer, Satirist and Comedian. Cook appeared on stage, TV, film and radio through 1960s -1990s with notables such as Dudley Moore. He founded the Establishment Club and owned Private Eye. He lived in a small 18th century house in Perrins Lane.

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Langford Reed

Born: 1889 | Died: 1954 | Grave: D 035 | Category: Literature

Prolific author, journalist [eg Daily Mail] and limerick writer. Compiled the Complete Rhyming Dictionary [1936] and the Complete Limerick Book. Came from old Hampstead family. His tombstone bears a double limerick.

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Sir Walter Besant

Born: 1836 | Died: 1901 | Grave: C 064 | Category: Literature

Novelist, antiquarian, social reformer. Resident at several addresses, notably Frognal End in Frognal Gardens [blue plaque]. His grave is a listed monument. Besant’s socially conscious novels prompted the establishment of the People’s Palace in Mile End. He was first chairman of the Society of Authors, started and edited The Author, and wrote a survey of…

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