Steel, Flora Annie (1847–1929)

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Steel, Flora Annie (1847–1929)

English novelist. Born Flora Annie Webster at Sudbury Priory, Harrow-on-the-Hill, England, on April 2, 1847; died on April 12, 1929; sixth child and second daughter of George Webster (a sheriff clerk of Forfarshire) and Isabella (Macallum) Webster (heiress of a Jamaican sugar planter); married Henry William Steel (with the Indian civil service), in 1867; children: daughter (b. 1870).

Lived in India (1868–89); advocated education for Indian women; was first inspector of girls' schools; was a member of the Provincial Educational Board (1884); lived in North Wales (1900–13).

Born in 1847 in Harrow, England, Flora Annie Steel grew up in Harrow and, following the onset of family financial difficulties, in Scotland. When she was 20, she married an officer with the Indian civil service, who had been a childhood friend, and accompanied him to India where they lived, chiefly in the Punjab, for the next 22 years. In many respects, her experiences exemplify the lifestyle of British women in India at the height of the British Raj. In their first three years of marriage, for example, Steel and her husband were posted to nine different locations. Like so many memsahibs (British women), Steel suffered the emotional trauma of sending her young daughter back to England to be educated in a supposedly healthier and more suitable climate.

Flora Annie Steel was not merely a typical memsahib. While in India, she became interested in Indian culture and history and began to write about those subjects for the British reading public. She published her first book, Wide Awake Stories, a collection of Indian folk tales, while still living in India. However, it was after her husband's retirement and their return to England in 1889 that Steel began to write in earnest the stories that would propel her to fame and popularity in Britain. Her bestselling novel about the Indian Mutiny of 1857, On the Face of the Waters, "sold like hot cakes," in Steel's own phrase. Her short stories, many of which were published in Macmillan's Magazine, and her series of historical romances of the Moghul Empire, were also quite popular. With her friend Grace Gardiner , Steel also authored The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, a "how-to" housekeeping manual and cookbook intended as a guide for British women setting up household in India. The book proved enormously popular and was one of the most influential 19th-century texts in shaping the role of the colonial woman. Steel continued to write until the end of her long life. She died in 1929, shortly after completing her autobiography, The Garden of Fidelity. Some of her best work is contained in two collections of short stories: From the Five Rivers (1893) and Tales from the Punjab (1894). Later works are In the Permanent Way (1897), Voices of the Night (1900), The Hosts of the Lord (1900), In the Guardianship of God (1903), and A Sovereign Remedy (1906).