Mrs. Wright Biddulph

Mrs. Wright Biddulph (b. Washington, West Sussex, 8 February 1848; d. Pimlico, London, 16 February 1931) 

Diana Goring was the daughter of Sir Henry Dent Goring (1801-1859), with his second wife Lady Mary Elizabeth Lewis Goring (1805-1871), who were married in Hove, Sussex, on 17 May 1842. Diana had at least two sisters, and some step-siblings from her father's earlier marriage 

Diana married Captain William Digby Lloyd (1845-1883) in Weybridge, Surrey, on 18 August 1870; they had two children, one son and one daughter.  Her first novel was published anonymously, A Fatal Sacrifice (London: Tinsley Brothers, [June] 1872). I have found nothing about the content of this book. As Mrs. Digby Lloyd she published her second novel, Arnold Leigh  (London: Tinsley Brothers, [September] 1880), a tale of Ireland (both of Diana's children were born in Offaly, Ireland), in which the curate Arnold Leigh, who is engaged to his cousin, jilts her for a showy girl. Reviews were not good. The St. James Gazette wrote: "it would be very difficult to make a more offensive little book than this out of equally simple materials" (28 September 1880). The Graphic was devastating: "if there were any sign of promise in Mrs. Lloyd's story, we would remind her that some slight knowledge of English grammar and spelling is even still considered more than merely advisable . . . the same indulgence can hardly be extended to a plot and to a set of so-called characters which are even below the average of such things, and are almost grotesquely feeble" (9 October 1880). Advertisements for Arnold Leigh divulged her authorship of A Fatal Sacrifice.  In Tinsley's Magazine for December 1880 she also published a short story "Ned Evans" 

After her first husband's death, she  married Anthony John Wright-Biddulph (1830-1895) in Portsea, Hampshire, on 22 November 1887; they had no children. Wright-Biddulph's first wife had died in 1886. He was the heir of Burton Park (owned by the Goring family in the sixteenth century), a famous recusancy near Duncton in West Sussex, where Catholics were allowed to resist the edict that all people must attend Church of England services.

As Mrs. Wright Biddulph (unhyphenated), Diana published two novels. The first, Cressida (London: Greening & Company, [May] 1906), has elements of fantasy, but it is basically a melodrama where a youth, Sir Derek Derenberg, helps a young girl who then conceives a life-long mission to save his soul. This amounts to a prolonged conflict with Cressida, who is devoted to Satanism and who can change shape into a large snake. The fantasy is a minor element, and most of the story is related to romance and social issues. The Bookseller summed up: "the whole tale is too bizarre and too unreal to deserve permanent success" (6 September 1906).

Her final book, again as Mrs. Wright Biddulph, was The Pirates of Society (London: Heath Cranton, [April] 1919). It concerns a young South American heiress who is brought up in a French convent, and launched into London society by the corrupt Lady Alberta. The Irish Independent noted that "interest in the narrative is intently sustained" (28 April 1919).

 Mrs. Wright-Biddulph is perhaps best remembered as a longtime friend of Hilaire Belloc, who wrote most of his book The Four Men: A Farrago (1912) under her roof at Burton, and who dedicated the book to her.