Lady Eleanor Furneaux Smith (1902, Birkenhead

Birkenhead

Birkenhead is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside, England. It is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite the city of Liverpool...

 – 1945) was an English writer. The eldest of the politician F. E. Smith

F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead

Frederick Edwin Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead GCSI, PC, KC , best known to history as F. E. Smith , was a British Conservative statesman and lawyer of the early 20th century. He was a skilled orator, noted for his staunch opposition to Irish nationalism, his wit, pugnacious views, and hard living...

's three children, she worked as a society reporter and cinema reviewer for a while, then as a publicist for circus companies. In the latter role she travelled more widely, and gained inspiration for her third career, writing popular novels and short stories which often provided the basis for the 'Gainsborough melodramas

Gainsborough melodramas

The Gainsborough melodramas were a sequence of films produced by the British film studio Gainsborough Pictures during the 1940s which conformed to a melodramatic style. The melodramas were not a film series but an unrelated sequence of films which had similar themes and frequently recurring actors...

' of the period. These stories often had a romanticised historical or Gypsy setting, based on her own research into Romany culture (she believed her paternal great-grandmother to have been a gypsy).

Novels

Year	Novel	Film adaptation
	Red Wagon Red Wagon (novel) Red Wagon is a 1930 novel by the British writer Lady Eleanor Smith. It is set in a circus company where the owner becomes involved in a love triangle with a lion tamer and a gypsy girl while the circus tours Continental Europe.-Film adaptation:...	Red Wagon Red Wagon (film) Red Wagon is a 1933 British drama directed by Paul L. Stein and starring Charles Bickford, Anthony Bushell and Greta Nissen. It was made by British International Pictures and adapted from the 1930 novel Red Wagon by Lady Eleanor Smith. A circus owner falls in love with a lion tamer.-Cast:* Charles... (1933)
	Tzigane	Gypsy (1937)
	Ballerina	The Men in Her Life The Men in Her Life The Men in Her Life was a 1941 film adaptation of the novel Ballerina by Eleanor Smith. It was nominated for the 1941 Academy Award for Sound , but lost to That Hamilton Woman.-Cast:* Loretta Young as Lina Varsavina... (1941)
	The Man in Grey The Man in Grey (novel) The Man in Grey by Baroness Orczy, author of The Scarlet Pimpernel, was first published in 1918. This time Orczy sets the action in post-revolutionary France....	The Man in Grey The Man in Grey The Man in Grey is a 1943 British film melodrama made by Gainsborough Pictures, and is widely considered as the first of its "Gainsborough melodramas"... (1943)
	Caravan Caravan (novel) Caravan is a melodramatic novel by the British writer Lady Eleanor Smith first published in 1942. A young Englishman Richard Darrell undertakes a mission to Spain for a business friend in order to have enough money to marry his sweetheart Oriana, but his villainous enemy Sir Francis Castleton...	Caravan Caravan (1946 film) Caravan is a 1946 British drama film directed by Arthur Crabtree. It was one of the Gainsborough Melodramas and is based on a novel Caravan by Eleanor Smith.... (1946)

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